The camera

Below is a picture of the camera I use (actually “cameras”, technically).  At its front is a 210mm f5.6 leaf shutter Rodenstock lens mounted on a Sinar lens board. The body of the camera is a Sinar P monorail view camera. The Sinar P has an extraordinary range of adjustments, very well suited to miniature photography. I often push these adjustments to their port-holing limits. On the back of the Sinar is a Fujifilm GFX 50 S II—essentially a sophisticated digital back for the Sinar. It’s mounted on a Sinar-to-Fujifilm G adapter machined in China.  I found it on eBay (the adapter Fujifilm offers doesn’t fit the Sinar. I bought one to try. It didn’t work but since they were in short supply I was able to unload it for most of what I paid for it). 

Shooting small scenes creates unusual requirements like, I suppose, other types of tabletop photography. Using a view camera allows close focussing and very narrow depth of field. As importantly, it allows me to use tilts and swings to play with focus and perspective to create a sense of scene as well as thematic emphases. I always shoot tethered to an Apple laptop, using Fujifilm’s new, and very good, Fujifilm Tether App.  

Even using a fair bit of light and shooting wide open, exposures are often measured in minutes rather than seconds, and then they take a long time for the GFX to process. I often shoot and re-shoot scores of times in an evening so it can become laborious and time-consuming.  Between each shot is a minuscule adjustment of pose, shadow, illumination or camera. 

Still, I love the feeling of working with an older camera, even if it is necessarily cluttered with the menu complexity and programmability of the GFX (which itself is a fine camera).