I have at last worked out what the problem with the new lens that has dogged this project has been caused by. Aghh!
Having checked (I thought) everything, I could only surmise that the problem lay with the new 210mm lens itself. The good people who supplied the lens, though, have conducted a number of tests on it and confirmed that it is in perfect working order. I have otherwise checked the camera and am happy with it. I am also confident in my ability to take reliable light meter readings and expose the film properly: why should my efforts work for my 150mm lens but not the 210mm? What though is the one thing I did not check thoroughly? The lens board!
This is the one other new piece of kit that I needed for the new lens but to which I did not pay much attention. For anyone unfamiliar with large format cameras, lenses are attached to the front frame by a square plate, which is, by and large, of a standard size. In the centre is a hole, through which the front and back elements of the lens and shutter, are screwed together. The diameter of the holes in the centres of these plates are also standard sizes (known as Copal 0 to 3). Each lens will conform to one of the sizes within this range, so a particular Copal lens board is needed for any given lens. My Rodenstock 150mm is Copal 0, the smallest size. The Schneider 210mm is Copal 1, the next size up. I therefore needed a new board for this new lens. The board I bought for the 150mm lens is metal, and absolutely light-proof. The new board is acrylic. It looks opaque. When I checked the interior of the camera for possible light leaks nothing showed. The people who supplied, and have confirmed the quality of my 210mm lens, wondered whether the problem might be a light-bleed on a double-dark slide. This struck me as inherently unlikely as I have not had a similar problem with anything shot on the smaller lens. Nevertheless, I did start to wonder yesterday whether there might be an issue with the new lens board. In particular, when I refitted it to the camera I noticed it was a little loose and rattled. The design of the front frame is though such that this alone is not an issue and does not let any extraneous light in, as I confirmed with judicious application of torchlight. Having nothing else left to do, almost out of idle curiosity, I turned the torch directly onto the lens board itself. And there was the answer, the light was shining straight through. Problem identified!
A phone call to the makers of my camera confirmed that they have only just become aware of the problem and a new board, with a suitably light-proof coating, is on its way to me, together with a fresh box of film to make up for all the frames wasted. Which is what I regard as good service.
I am not going to reshoot this project again (yet again – I have just had to go out to one of my sites for the umpteenth time to photograph it again as I unfortunately discovered that the last frame I took there a few days ago has been affected by a bit of light-bleed; I suspect the double-dark slide got nudged very slightly out of position, probably when I putting the slide into the changing bag before transferring the film into my developing tank, just enough to over-expose one side of the negative and just enough to be noticeable, and render it unusable). I am happy with what I have achieved with the old lens and cannot really afford yet more time on this assignment. I do though now have the excuse, and impetus, to find something else to do, probably not connected with this course, to experiment and see just what this new lens can do. I have high hopes!
And what is to be learned from this episode? One thing is of course the reminder that shooting film is a very different prospect from shooting digitally. Digital cameras do much, if not necessarily everything for you (compare my Canon DSLR and my Leica, which are a bit like chalk and cheese), and “light hygiene” is not really an issue. With film on the other hand, you have to go right back to basics for just about everything and light hygiene is absolutely paramount. Shooting film requires so much more care and attention, all the more so if you develop your own negatives and print from them. For some time I have been of the view that far from being “Luddite”, using film is a useful way of learning, relearning, reinforcing, the basics of photography that are in danger of being lost in an otherwise monolithically digital world where the camera does so much of the legwork for you (though even the very best cameras will not make you a good photographer if you do not know how to use what is, after all, just another tool). I would not necessarily advocate making it compulsory as part of the course to spend some time using film (as I believe some schools have in the past) but I certainly agree with the OCA recommendation that if at all possible students should get some experience of large and medium format cameras (I am conscious that I still need to spend more time with my old Hasselblad). Despite the recent frustrations, hopefully now resolved, I certainly feel that it has been a worthwhile experience getting to grips, even if still only at a fairly elementary level, with film photography and that this will inform future work with digital cameras.
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 