[LargeFormat] Oh My Goodness Part II

[rstein]

Dear Friends,

    It was with a small sense of shock that I realised that I have passed a
milestone in my photography. Not as much shock as my friend Syd who passed a
kidney stone, but still....

    I was looking at the back of the Linhof the other Saturday as I lined
up a number of WW1 renactors for regimental photos and I realised that the
images were not upside down.

    This was alarming - they had always been so in previous years - people
who looked under the focussing cloth remarked upon it and I gave the
conventional explanation with the little light ray diagram. Shaken, I
borrowed a Mamiya C22 from my servant and looked down into the focussing
screen.

    Worse yet - the images were not reversed right to left.

    I was just about to ring up to my local GP for a brain scan when I
suddenly realised I had passed through the eye/brain barrier and had
forgotten that what I see is optical shorthand for what really exists.

     The same thing happened in dental school. We all had our new operative
kits with the mirrors and the probes and for months we prodded and peered
into phantom heads and nervous charity patients trying to coordinate our
eyes and hands. And then one day the mirrors disappeared and we could do
everything reversed as naturally as direct vision - switching imperceptibly
from one view of the universe to the reverse without detecting any anomaly
in our own minds. No-one taught us - it just happened.

     I think the same has occurred with the ground glass screens. If I look
carefully now I can see that the subjects are upside down in the Linhof but
if I am just working instinctively, they are right side up. Now I am waiting
for my eyes to complain about the general view because it doesn't have a K2
filter over it.

     Uncle Dick