We carried our new toy, the Intrepid 4×5 large format camera to Yosemite in the past weekend. With this modern day remake of the old technology, every step of photography leaped back like good old school days.
There’s no WYSIWYG viewfinder but a half-transparent ground glass on the back of the camera — we had to wrap it with a silly black cloth in order to see the scene.
There’s no auto-focus but a nob at the bottom of the camera and a magnifying glass — we turned the nob and peeked through the magnifier on the ground glass to make our best guess of the focus.
There’s no metering system on the camera — we had to hand hold a light meter to measure the exposure readings of different areas of the scene and make our best judgment of the appropriate exposure.
There’s no memory card to store the images — we need to mount a pre-loaded film holder to the back of the camera in order to take one single picture. Taking a second picture requires a new film holder.
There’s no room for errors — we had to adjust the focus, the aperture, the shutter speed on the camera, check and re-check every setting, test fire before taking the actual picture. And there’s always a haunting thought afterwards about forgetting to set everything correct.
With every press of the cable release, a half cup of Starbucks coffee was gone. Thank goodness, we only “drank” one full cup of coffee that morning.
The result is hardly satisfactory. Nevertheless it was a fun experience.
