medium format/ studio work

[SteveinAlaska]

In one week the studio portion of my class will be held and for 8 weeks after we will have free access to do our required shoots and for our personal use. At that time I would like to use 2 of my MF cameras, they are a 6x9 Voightlander Bessa RF with a Compur-Rapid shutter and Helomar1:3.5 lens. The other being a 6x6 Zeiss 521/16 with the Compur "00" shutter and a Novar1:3.5 lens. Another student has expressed a strong interest in working with me and learning to use these cameras also. We will be using Ilford HP5 Plus film in 400ISO
The questions are - How close can I be to my subject for a full frame head or body shot? I have only made a couple of tries at portraits with family members and was not sastified with my results. I have done some surfing the 'net and I see where supplementary lens are available for close up work.
At this point, we are planning on going thru a couple of rolls of film by just measuring off some distances, taking notes on where we are standing/sitting and then after making a contact sheet and comparing with our notes, we will refine/define our distance to subject. Another question is that neither one of these cameras are setup for flash and we are assuming that we will make up for this by studio lighting. Lastly,knowing the age and design of the shutters and lens, we may have a limit on our camera settings. A thank you to anyone offering. I hope that I explained the situation well enough to be understood.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Is your studio lighting continuous or strobe? If you've got strobes, it's desirable to be able to use it. The modeling lights won't give you as much light to work with. If the shutters have PC sync contacts (which they may not, depending on how old they are), they will connect to your strobes. If you've got continuous lighting ("hot lights"), then you can just meter and use it.

Cameras like this usually focus to about 3 or 3.5 feet. With my Perkeo II (6x6) or the Bessa II (6x9) I used to own, I often like to focus at the minimum distance, so on 6x6 with a typical folding camera and no supplementary lenses, you can get this close--



And with a 6x9 folder, you can get this close--