Ugly duckling

Today was another splendid autumn day and  I took my bike to drive to the lab to deliver the films from the Sint Rombouts expedition on Saturday. In an impulse I decided to put my "ugly duckling" in the backpack. It's squarely the least elegant camera I have: the Obscura Camera Piccolino 4x5". It's a very no-nonsense design of a large format hand shooter,  kind of handmade too in Switzerland. I had it fitted with a simple 90mm Congo lens (these are budget range lenses - old, trusted Tessar designs, but multicoated - that have basically been made since 1924 by Yamasaki Optics. 

I bought it a few months ago and haven't had the time to put it to the test. However, I need a superminimalistic 4x5" package when I travel to Pakistan in the spring next year. We will spend a month in extremely rugged terrain, hauling 30+ kilos over 150km of high altitude glaciers. I need something that allows me to take large formats negs with a minimum of packing volume and weight. Maybe the Piccolino will do the job. Today I took a handful of Provia 100F Quickload sheets and made 6 exposures on the way to the lab. It works  like a charm. The ergonomics are not ideal, with the film sheet protruding on the righthand side. I shot almost everything camera focused at infinity, 1/30s and f22 (in order to have sufficient dof). Composing has to be done with a rough sportsfinder.

I picked up the exposed sheets later in the day (again a return journey by bike) and they look pretty good. There's a few where I have some stray light scattering and that will probably be due to some glaringly shiny screws in the inside of the camera. (It's obvious too in this picture from the castle, upper lefthand corner). I need to mask them with black tape and I assume that everything will be all right. I need to verify that in another test. But otherwise the camera seems to work well. It's a promising option for Pakistan. It will be a huge opportunity to take 4x5" to one of the most mindblowing landscapes on this planet.