These portraits were from annual event in Houston celebrating Frida Kahlo. I had picked up a Nikon mount adapter plate for 4×5 backs, and had wanted to try it out. The 4×5 camera is a monorail from Calumet; the lens is a Caltar 210mm f/6.8 set at f/11. I put a Sony A7ii on the plate with a Nikon to Sony E mount adapter, and used a pair of triggers set up to fire a Photogenic strobe. I was able to zoom in on the Sony display to check focus, as I adjusted the rail standard spacing. There is some vignetting in the images – I don’t know if that’s related to this setup in general or a function of the adapter for the mirrorless body; I’ll have to try this with a Nikon body to see what happens.
The sharpness of the images was better than I had expected – I had read about some mixed results using this setup, but was pleased with how things looked. I did not shift the standards for these to minimize how many things I was trying on this first experiment, but I’d like to work with that in future portraits.
All of this will hopefully lead to me loading up some 4×5 sheet film so I can take advantage of the full coverage of the lens on large format. 35mm is so small compared to 4×5, so I’m only using a portion of what the lens can capture.
