How To Use 617/612 Camera

Quick Field Guide and Best Practices

(More details here in detailed CCB 617C / 612C manual)

With a 617 format camera in hand, personally, I find it quite natural to use. It also fits the natural way of seeing as vision with both eyes tends to go very wide including peripheral vision.

More often than not my CCB 617C images correspond with what I saw in the field with my eyes. With other formats, success rates are certainly lower in my case. Most of the images I take end up visually strong. Even in a case when I end up with a less appealing image, it's much stronger than my average images taken in other formats. 

Probably the most important thing when it comes to any panoramic cameras is proper leveling. Meticulous leveling will maximize potential with any image. Since the image is very wide on both 617 and 612, error in leveling will necessitate cropping to level the image. A few degrees of correction can disrupt composition and leave less image area for scanning or darkroom printing.

Small 3d printed viewfinder that comes with the camera is very precise when used to determine the edges of the image by looking down the sides of the viewfinder.

The second way of focusing and composing with 617/612 is with the Ground glass attachment. Attachment is very easy to use as the camera body separates from the lens cone and can be used to precisely frame and focus the image.

Focusing can also be done by observing DOF and Hyperfocal markings and lining up desired settings.

My personal way of using 617 is in the pair with a camera with a more standard format. Most of the time that second camera is CCB 45PS 4x5 inch large format camera that's sharing the same 90mm lens. The 90mm lens is my favorite on this format and it makes it easy to pack both cameras in a smaller shoulder bag.

This combination gives me the same lens perspective on two different formats and in my case that works well for finding subjects and compositions that work in one of these two formats. Almost inevitably a scene will look right in one of the two aspect ratios. Quite often the scene ends up being captured in both formats, 617 and 4x5.

Sometimes CCB 45PS is replaced with a field 4x5 large format camera for 4x5 and CCB 617C used in a standard Graflok back on that 4x5 LF camera.

Less often 617 is combined with a 6x6 medium format camera or 35mm film camera. I rarely use a digital camera apart from filming manuals and videos of CCB Cameras and corresponding product images.