Big Ass Camera

Here is a photo of the Gowlandflex so you can see why I'm calling this blog Big Ass Camera. The person shown should give you a sense of its actual size :P

Learning to work with this new tool has been a challenge. When the camera arrived I was having trouble focusing it. After a series of emails to Peter I found out how to calibrate the focus mechanism and I also discovered the focusing lens was loose in its lens board. Now that these problems are fixed I'm starting to experiment with the camera and having some success.

At the same time I have been having some fun at TechShop if you notice the top of the camera I've created an adapter to use a right angle view finder from my Fuji GX680 (the best camera I've ever used) on the Gowlandflex. This is a great solution for location photography because it means I don't need a dark cloth to see the ground glass in bright light. The adapter is my own design and the parts for it were cut out of acrylic with the TechShop laser etcher/cutter. A brilliant tool (check out Epilog).

Now that I have the camera working the way I want It's time to start making some images and I'll share those with you starting with my next post. As I said when I started writing this is about learning to work with a new camera but the blog is also about creating a new body of work with Polaroid Type 55 as a medium.