looks like diana+ may have a little competition

Looks like there is another camera vying for my love/hate attention--the Zero Image 4x5. Yipes. When things are good between us, the images are really pretty good but most of the time, well, we just don't seem to be getting along and the images confound me. Actually, I was fine with the 50mm b/w pinhole images I took the other morning with the 6x9 roll-back mask, but when I switched to the 6x6 mask, took off the extension frame and switched to the zone plate, well, I wasn't crazy about the results. I'm still getting image overlap on some frames, so I'm not sure what the deal is with that. Next time I think I'll try the 6x4.5 mask though to see if the problem is with the smaller masks or with the 6x6 specifically. There were a couple images on this roll that I didn't even bother scanning. Part of the problem with them was that I was taking images with the sun behind the scene and it just made everything appear foggy. The coneflower image below is pretty typical of the latest batch of images: blah. (Seems I still need to get used to the wideness/wide angle of this camera--hello tripod, hello foot.)

There were actually only two images that I liked and those appear beneath the coneflower image. On the bright side, the exposures were okay--that's always a concern with the long exposures--that they'll be terrifically under-exposed. I used fuji 800 color film metered at 400 on my digital cam and then doubled most of the exposure times. Between the 800 speed film and a f/43.5 for the zone plate, exposure times were considerably shorter than they were with the last roll. The coneflower image was a 3 sec exposure and the two basement shots were each about 8 seconds if I recall correctly. It's frustrating not feeling in command of what I'm shooting (or not being able to better anticipate results) but it provides me with a challenge. If nothing else, these almost-failures leave me wanting to try something else to see if I can get this camera to do what I want it to do, what I've seen others do with it.