The Beast

That's what I'm calling it.
Actually it's not that large, but it is heavy and sort of hard to handle.
I've been a waiting and a watching and finally it came along so I had to do it.
This:

Yeah it looks like them other press cameras I got but this one is the big brother.
Busch Pressman model D, it shoots 4x5 film and I got the Polaroid film back to work okay too.
Of course, like anything I dive into head first without looking, there are some bananahead adventures.
So I get the camera and I load it up and I get this:

WTH?
I'm getting a ghost image.
Of sorts.
Well the lens on this particular camera was made like in the Bronze Age so maybe the optics are not exactly up to par.
Or maybe I'm getting some kind of internal reflections.
Or maybe I just don't know what the hell I'm doing.
Probably the latter.
I'm sad.
I was so looking forward to getting this thing and making some awesome pictures!
Wait!
This doesn't happen at night!

For the life of me I can't figure out what is wrong.
So I'm looking at the offensive pictures and notice that Hmmmm...they look kinda like pinhole camera images.
Insert facepalm here.
If you look closely at the image of the camera above you will see two holes on the faceplate above and to the left of the lens.
That's where a flash solenoid was attached, the one I took off.
Well at the time it seemed like the holes did not go all the way through the faceplate, but apparently they did.
Just a small enough perforation to act as a pinhole camera!
Some tape on the inside and problem solved:

Now I'm happy!
So off I go to make some pictures:

That last one is another Polaroid, or rather Fuji peel apart.
The thing about these large format cameras is that they can do some pretty neat things.
Like correct for perspective:

You can see in the first image the buildings sort of leaning away from the camera, then in the other picture they are sort of straighter.
I'm still learning how to make the corrections and fooling with the other stuff.
More on that later.
Another great thing about these large format cameras is that you can make pictures via contact method, not really using the enlarger.
Still, I picked up these:

Beseler 67cs enlargers from deep in the school's catacombs.
Time to reconsider the direction of my program.
More on this later too.
I also got this:

Some really old film that probably expired like 30 years ago.
Which I shot today.
More on this well, later.
Later.