First Light Redux

Ok, so the first light on my box camera isn't so different from first light on any of the instruments at work. You win some, you lose some, some stuff works, and some stuff makes you go, "Arooo?!"

The good news is neither image showed light leaks of ANY sort. This is a little surprising to me, considering how hard it was to get the front of the camera light-tight, and that I accidentally popped one of the film holders up a little while pulling the dark slide. (What I get for running with no springs on my spring back.) It apparently didn't pop enough to get loose.

The bad news is the focus is off. problem is I can't tell how it's off. Odd parts of the image seem to be in better focus than others, but there's no rhyme or reason to it. I think I need to go back to the ground glass so I can work with it for a little bit. The f/16 shot should've given me a fair bit of depth of field, and the fact that it didn't leads me to believe I'm still on the long side of infinity. This can be fixed with spacers. But I basically need to pack everything up, park myself somewhere with a lot of things at a lot of different distances, and play until I understand what's going on.

So no, no pictures to post. But I hope to have it figured out in the very near future.

(Rats...)

Tom