Maris, I sort of guessed that there may have been more to the evenness of the picture than at first appeared. As a long time darkroom addict, I usually know what needs edge burning and what doesn’t. Funnily enough, C41 colour prints were easier to do than panchromatic B&W prints from the same negative, they were also easier to do than prints from B&W film, all things being equal.
Colour prints of interiors were usually easiest of the lot to do, often because the different colour light sources made for an array of colour palette so demanding it was virtually impossible to neutralise. So we usually left the colour warm and didn’t worry too much about some minor blemishes here and there.
The Fuji Reala film when it came out with its fourth layer of colour, was the only non-Kodak film we were allowed to use (we were a total Kodak establishment). It was like opening Pandora’s Box, the change was profound, near neutral colour when light from daylight, Tungsten and fluorescent were all mixed. Used that film almost exclusively for myself and standardised my home colour printing with that film.
Back to the subject(s) with regard to you settling for a Toyo instead of a Sinar, I don’t think there is too much in it. In our studios (14 of them) we generally had around 16 or so photographers doing stuff from around 0800hr through to 2200hr five days a week, with special shoots on weekends. As a result we had access to a plethora of photographic equipment, including some interesting view cameras.
Using view cameras one usually had a choice between Toyo and Sinar, with Toyo the more likely option as they always seemed to be easier to use, plus we had every accessory in the book for them. Possibly the only real accessory worth mentioning that we had for the Sinar, was the TTL metering.
This was basically a Gossen meter with a long knife like blade accessory that one could insert anywhere on the inside of the ground glass to get spot on light reading, whether the bellows was minimised or extended with an extension, it gave on the money light readings. It was however problematic to use, it worked well, but it was not what I would call user friendly.
Funnily enough, almost every photographer that used it, almost always still did an E6 exposure first, then waited the 30 odd minutes for it to be processed and on the colour corrected light box before going ahead with the shoot. Sort of negated the idea of using a light meter. It did however confirm simple calculations done using a ruler to measure bellows extension. But its biggest eye opener as far as I was concerned, was light fall off using wide to very wide lenses.
As a result I picked up the fibre optic extension for my own Profisix light meter, this enabled me to take light readings directly from the ground glass. Great for studio work, but a bit of a time waster for anything else. Still, I picked it up for a song about 28 years or so ago.
Back to Toyo monorails, like most cameras they are only a tool to hold film and optics in correct alignment, but what a tool. I picked up my 45G literally as I was walking out of the Melbourne Photographic Flea Market in March this year. I was with another person there where we had a table essentially selling deceased photographic estates of a couple of friends. On my final walk out with a trolley of empty boxes, I spied the 45G, which was only three tables away which had been there all day but unnoticed by me.
I looked at it for about 15 seconds, noted the price tag, then pulled out the required notes. Total transaction from start to finish was about 2 minutes, three tops. My re-acquaintance with the Toyo monorail cameras has reinforced my memory of them as pretty much capable of doing anything pretty well. Like riding a bicycle, once learnt, never forgotten. Upon reading your possible future ways of shooting with your Toyo monorail, I pulled mine out then set it up and did some measurements, your post had piqued my curiosity. It was a great way to start December the 25th.
Another aspect, do you own a centre filter? I had used one in another life way back when and often wondered as I was burning in stuff shot using my 90mm Angulon on my Shen Hao 4x5” camera. With the purchase early this year of a Fujinon f/5.6, 65 SWD I wondered about whether or not a centre filter would help. I quickly exposed a couple of sheets using this lens then enlarged them. I reckoned that a centre filter would or could be helpful.
I also asked a couple of people I know shooting with 65mm lenses with the 4x5” format. They both reckoned there wasn’t too much of an issue, I also feel that while both of these individuals do wet printing, they also appear to have a very good scanned negative output, so I still wasn’t too sure.
As luck would have it, a Heliopan 67mm graduated centre filter turned up in Australia at the right price about 1 week from the start of a three month far western outback Qld holiday. I picked it up then raced off and exposed one sheet with the filter, and one without the filter. The results were astounding on the ground glass, let alone in the darkroom. I haven’t shot anything on my 65mm without using the centre filter since. Prints in the darkroom now are essentially straight prints with just normal dodging or burning in, as opposed to edge and corner issues with a super wide lens fall off.
Mick.