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We didn't realize how strongly people felt about Big Macs! Here's a few additional comments, especially for those that didn't read the disclaimers at the end of the last blog post. Of course we are familiar with the standard inflation calculators and other such financial tools etc. Frankly, they're rather meaningless for this conversation. Why? Because they are trying to capture the overall value of money and thus include too many variables: electronics, fuel, housing etc. For example, what if we compare the price of film to color televisions? How about to the price of gasoline? Both give interesting answers...

I was chatting with a friend last week and the cost of shooting film came up. Now, he has been shooting large format for decades and commented that it's a lot more expensive today than when he started. But is it? Obviously, we pay more for a box of film now, but we pay more for everything. So I decided to spend a few minutes and research the price of sheet film from days gone by. Should be easy; after all, you can find anything on the Internet. I chose to start in the '70s, since that's when I started...

Now you have no excuse for not recording the technical details of every shot.

In our lastest video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-iD_XNpnrg&feature=youtu.be), we discussed the importance of adjusting your exposure based on the actual speed of your shutter. We've even published a handy chart that does the math for you. (See our previous blog post: https://shop.stearmanpress.com/blogs/news/about-that-shutter) Of course, this implies that you know your shutter's actual speed. Spoiler alert: it isn't what's marked on the dial. We've been asked if we had any suggestions for determining the actual shutter speed without buying a shutter speed test set. After all, what good is a ZoneCalc, if you can't control the zone! We've been measuring our shutters using a...

Shutter Speeds in the real world In our last video, Top Ten Things That I wish I had known when starting in Large Format Photography, I made some harsh remarks about shutters. Mainly, that they're notoriously inaccurate and that you should have them calibrated. This creates another issue: now that you've got a chart showing the marked speed vs the actual speed, what do you do with it? This is also an issue if your meter uses the more modern sequence: 1/30, 1/60, 1/125..., and your lens uses the traditional 1/25, 1/50, 1/100 ... Of course, the math required to...