I really needed to get out of the house the other day, so I went out to the shore and shot some landscapes. Been meaning to do it for a while. It was also a good opportunity to try out some new large-format equipment in a Stearman Press 4x5 development tank and the Schneider-Kreuznach telephoto lens,¹ both of which I've had sitting on my desk for months.

Naturally, I ended up learning about some gaps in my large-format field technique. This was my first attempt to set up any kind of movement-heavy shots on the Super while in sunlight, and as it turned out my spare T-shirt I tossed in my backpack was a poor substitute for a dark-cloth while shooting with the sun on an EV 16 day. I could barely see the corners of the ground glass, especially with filters in place, and as a result I really flew too close to the sun on that last shot with the radar tower. I wanted to tilt forward in order to get both the valve gear in the foreground and the tower in focus, which I only partially succeeded in doing, and I also had to pick the front standard up a bit, so the result was that I only exposed the bottom four inches or so of the negative.

Overall, I'm not really that impressed with the lens! The image circle is pretty tight - on most of these shots I applied about a centimeter of front rise, which was sufficient to get some moderate vignetting at the top of the frame, and the sharpness isn't anything to write home about. I do quite like the focal length, so it's possible in the future I'll end up with a monorail camera and a ~300mm lens designed for 5x7 or 8x10 use such as the Kodak 12" (305mm) ƒ/6.3 Commercial Ektar that's often available for vaguely reasonable prices.

What matters, though, is that I don't think I would have taken a single one of these photos with a 35mm camera. Even if I was shooting off a tripod, there's no force that makes me plan every shot from start to finish like with large format. It really feels more like I'm working with the landscape, rather than demanding something of it as I do with smaller formats. I'm very happy with these results.