Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

Well it’s been unpacked and although I can’t actually play with it properly (no Arca Swiss mount yet) I have been trying it outside in the sunshine. First comment it, working on a ground glass large screen is astonishing.

You can actually see the details of the picture. The default ‘3D’ effect is something that is a little unnerving and something I will have to be very wary of when composing. I’m worried that our brains are so hard wired to recognise the 3D edges of things that I will find compositions that are based on this effect. It’s the classic symptom of wandering around a wood and thinking ‘this would make a fantastic photograph’ and then the actual photo is a jumble. All of the information was in the 3D edges of the trees and branches and the receeding lines were all in your head and not actually on the ground glass. Anyway, the usual trick in these cases is to just close an eye to get the ‘flat’ effect.

The Schneider loupe is very good, I can focus as accurately as I can set the knobs. The assymetrical tilt makes it very easy to set up complex scheimpflug configurations (as long as you have something on the 1/3 line). I’ve obviously yet to compose in earnest so we’ll see what happens. A nice feature of the Schneider loupe is a rubber neckstrap with quick release ends. I’m going to have to take a photograph of these to show what I mean. A nice design touch.

One downer is that one of the knobs has been attached slightly at an angle. This means it wobbles as it rotates. Although this is not affecting the camera as far as I can tell, I will be contacting Robert White to ask their advice. My only worry is that the camera may have taken a knock which could affect some other aspect of operation.

An important lesson learned about the Ebony very early on is to always screw down the rear tilt knobs before picking the camera up. If you don’t do this, you pull the camera very quickly into a full rear rise. If you’ve got no bellows extension this looks like it could damage the bellows. I’ve been caught out by this one twice but luckily stopped before I pulled up too far.

Another interesting observation is the the base extension knob locking wheels don’t rotate along with the main knobs. Sometimes causing the bed to lock itself up. This is not a problem once you’ve noticed what is happening.

Overall my impression is of a very workmanlike tool. It is by no means a delicate work of art. I would have been a lot happier had I received a manual with the camera but I think I’ve read around enough to know what most things are doing. I’ll try to write my own guide to the operation of the camera sometime soon. Hopefully I’ll be out taking photos before then.