Dear Justin, Well, pooh, you have a great deal more talent for taking pictures than we thought. I'll still stand by the recommendations, though. The 4 x 5 as finishing line pictures should be nice and detailled - sort of a sweatorama. Given that you will need to focus carefully to take advantage of the resolving power of the large negative but will be playing with a smaller depth of field for a standard focal length lens ( I seem to need f.16-32 for my studio work with a 150 Symmar S ), you may have to arrange the subjects precisely. If it is bicycle racing that you will work with I would find a suitably-lit section of road near to the finish line, carefully measure the light intensity ( do it beforehand with an incident meter ) and stretch a bit of piano wire across the road at about hub height. People will stop and if several of them do it one after another you will have a large group shot before the paramedics come. It is always polite to give them prints later. If it is filthy weather remember that the big neg will stand a lot more enlargement or conversely a lot more grain in a smaller print - so you can trade off the FP4Plus for HP5 or some of the zippier Delta emulsions and gains some stops and speeds. I am a pessimist, however, and still downrate HP5 to 320 ASA. Rodinal is very forgiving in hot weather. Uncle Dick PS: Not all things about large format are good, but some are interesting. Last Saturday I took pictures of a fully -clothed lady pianist for my glamour girls exhibition. I was initially doubtful about trying to take pictures ina small lounge room full of three full-size pianos but decided that it was rather like hunting elephants. You hunt elephants where elephants live and as you can't move a piano.... First time for everything. Halfway into the shoot the synch connection post on the Copal shutter for my Super Angulon 90 snapped right off. Luckily I had a Nikkor 135 with a similar Copal shutter so I exchanged elements from the two lenses and carried on. I know there was an easier way to do it rather than a 4 x 5 Linhof but the resultant negatives are superb. ============================================================================================================= To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.