From my previous post it will be clear there was a serious light leak problem with my 10×8 1909 bellows field camera. Investigations in a dark room with an led torch inside the camera did show a few pinhole leaks in the corners of the bellows but nothing serious. A potentially more serious leak arose from a loose clip holding the back of the camera on, but after securing this further testing with a paper negative loaded in the camera, showed there was still a problem – it must be coming from the film holders and gaps around the sliding covers. A temporary solution has been to cover the whole back of the camera with the black focussing cloth whilst exposing the negative. Doing this I came back from my trip to Bristol’s Brunel heritage sites with 4 good-ish negatives ( no leaks).
The image of the SS Great Britain was blurred as my tripod head is just not able to cope with the added weight of the focussing cloth on the back of camera. I am now waiting for delivery of a vintage wooden Gandolfi tripod which should be good for the job – I’ll report back on that….
(Image below of 10×8 on location and digitally produced positive image of the paper negative produced.)
