Hello!
My name is Marcus, I am 22 years old and I live in Göteborg on the west coast of sweden. I was until recently employed as an IT-tech but the project I worked on finished a month ago and now I will be going back to school to study something non-IT related..
I have not been photographing very long, I remember taking holiday snaps with my mothers Minolta Hi-Matic F when I was 8 or so, but the first "serious" photography I did was when I took some classes in school when I was 17, but it never caught on, I didn't really learn much except general exposure and in what order to dunk the print in the chemicals.
My main hobby for all these years was aquariums and fishkeeping, and in the end of 2004 I wanted a digital camera to document my fish and so on, I finally settled on spending the big bucks for a DSLR because I knew I was going to eventually anyway for proper manual focus and better high ISO. Anyways once I got the camera I discovered that photography was really fun when not done in school, funny how that is.
After a while with the digital camera I felt a tug to do wet prints and shoot film like I did in school, but I wanted sheet film. We played with polaroids in the teachers LF camera for just a little bit one lesson, but something about focusing on the upside-down ground glass must have got to me, and the more I read about LF the more I knew it was for me. I always used a tripod with the digital anyway, I got over the "spray and pray"-phase quickly.
So I bought a Sinar Norma on the swedish version of the auction site. The camera and 2 lenses (Symmar 210/5,6 and Super Angulon 121/8) together with a Durst Laborator 1000 enlarger I bought was less than the DSLR. They are almost twice my age and will probably outlive me. Its great working with such finely crafted tools. My non-photographer friend described it as an anti-digital camera, being all mechanical. I like it that way, after being a computer-nerd and working with them since as far as I remember I'm tired of computers.
I have had the Sinar for 2 months now, and I have just recently taken the first negs that when I learn to print properly I would be happy to hang on my wall. I have decided to stick with one film/developer combination since that what people here say to do, so i use Efke PL100 and Calbe R09 because they are are the cheapest
I have sort of almost started to be able to visualize what a print will look like when i view a scene now. I have learned so much more from the net and the Adams book triology than i ever did in school. Last week I printed my first fiber paper, it was a total disaster but maybe thats because the paper was 15 years old.
Now this is a long post, I hope you got something from it. I enjoyed summing it all up.
Cheers
Marcus Karlsson
My name is Marcus, I am 22 years old and I live in Göteborg on the west coast of sweden. I was until recently employed as an IT-tech but the project I worked on finished a month ago and now I will be going back to school to study something non-IT related..
I have not been photographing very long, I remember taking holiday snaps with my mothers Minolta Hi-Matic F when I was 8 or so, but the first "serious" photography I did was when I took some classes in school when I was 17, but it never caught on, I didn't really learn much except general exposure and in what order to dunk the print in the chemicals.
My main hobby for all these years was aquariums and fishkeeping, and in the end of 2004 I wanted a digital camera to document my fish and so on, I finally settled on spending the big bucks for a DSLR because I knew I was going to eventually anyway for proper manual focus and better high ISO. Anyways once I got the camera I discovered that photography was really fun when not done in school, funny how that is.
After a while with the digital camera I felt a tug to do wet prints and shoot film like I did in school, but I wanted sheet film. We played with polaroids in the teachers LF camera for just a little bit one lesson, but something about focusing on the upside-down ground glass must have got to me, and the more I read about LF the more I knew it was for me. I always used a tripod with the digital anyway, I got over the "spray and pray"-phase quickly.
So I bought a Sinar Norma on the swedish version of the auction site. The camera and 2 lenses (Symmar 210/5,6 and Super Angulon 121/8) together with a Durst Laborator 1000 enlarger I bought was less than the DSLR. They are almost twice my age and will probably outlive me. Its great working with such finely crafted tools. My non-photographer friend described it as an anti-digital camera, being all mechanical. I like it that way, after being a computer-nerd and working with them since as far as I remember I'm tired of computers.
I have had the Sinar for 2 months now, and I have just recently taken the first negs that when I learn to print properly I would be happy to hang on my wall. I have decided to stick with one film/developer combination since that what people here say to do, so i use Efke PL100 and Calbe R09 because they are are the cheapest
I have sort of almost started to be able to visualize what a print will look like when i view a scene now. I have learned so much more from the net and the Adams book triology than i ever did in school. Last week I printed my first fiber paper, it was a total disaster but maybe thats because the paper was 15 years old.
Now this is a long post, I hope you got something from it. I enjoyed summing it all up.
Cheers
Marcus Karlsson
There are a few folks in your area who uses film. I guess you could always try to get in touch with Fredrik, as you are using 4x5. He's into 4x5 and 8x10 and hangs out on 
