So, I just joined the Large Format Photography Forum, starting the clock on the 30 days to get access to the classified section there. Noticed them saying that this is another good place to keep an eye on, so joined here. I notice I can at least see the classifieds here, but can't reply or PM... but it looks like the rules are a bit different. Regardless, I'm going to copy/paste my intro post from over there, and just edit it a bit.
I've been doing vacation photography for years now, my primary use is for 16x20 landscape prints of the places we've been, and we slowly cycle through what's hung up around the home. I've been doing this for decades now, with one to three pictures from each destination.
I started with an OM-10, then acquired the better bodies and lenses over the years (at least one of each of OM-1, OM-2N, and OM-4Ti). I resisted digital for years until it was getting to difficult to get good prints made, and I moved to the Four-Thirds system. I went through E-1, E-510, E-520, E-620, and finally ended up on on the E-30, which has been my primary camera for at least ten years now. I never moved to micro four-thirds because it never really added anything I needed, and I never wanted to start playing lens acquisition again.
Well, when we were in Iceland, I lost my last eyecup dangling over Brúarfoss:
Irritatingly, this isn't the sort I would usually even bother with since if you Google "Brúarfoss", you'll find thousands of pictures from the same location, with many of them better than mine... which is why I was dangling off a cliff to try to get something different. Turned out the angle wasn't quite what I thought it was from up top, so the image was unusable.
Upon returning home, I discovered that finding parts and accessories for my obsolete E-30 has become too painful, so I figured it was time to change systems yet again.
After digging through all the various digital systems, nothing really struck me as well suited to my needs and reasonably affordable, so I decided to just get "the best landscape system possible" so I would never need to go through this again in my life.
Weeks of research later, I was very close to grabbing a Fuji GFX 50S when I realized that film isn't completely dead, E-6 isn't *that* hard to develop yourself, and 4x5 is just barely starting to become obsolete... meaning it's likely the cheapest it will ever be right now. Given that I take around twenty pictures per year, and print two or three of them, I could get a decent 4x5 system and use that for a thousand years before I spent enough money to buy a GFX 50S and two lenses.
Of course, I'm not 100% convinced I'm making the right choice, so I 3D printed myself an open source field camera, and bought the bellows, ground glass, and a pinhole "lens" from Standard Cameras to build something to play with until next year.
I've also acquired five film holders (though I also designed one to 3D print should I need to) and recently won an auction for a pre-anniversary Speed Graphic that comes with an Ektar 127mm F:4.7 in a Supermatic, a Protar V 3½" f:18(!) in a barrel, and a mystery lens missing the trim ring in a Supermatic with scale for f:7.7, so I'm assuming it's either an Anastigmat or Ektar 203mm. The whole pile should arrive Monday or Tuesday.
The lenses with shutters have solenoids on them, and there's what appears to be a Heiland flash unit to drive them. The Graflex has been updated with a Graflok back, and has the rangefinder with Focuspot, optical viewfinder, and a bunch of weird cables.
The plan is to keep the lenses (except maybe the Protar... I can't imagine what F/18 looks like on ground glass, and I don't expect to have a focal plane shutter in whatever camera I end up going with in the future) and sell on the rest, but I'm a hopeless packrat, so more realistically, I'll play with it for a while, maybe clean/fix various bits, then put it back in the case and pile it on the rest of my junk in the garage.
So far I've designed a mount to put my E-30 onto the back of my 3D printed field camera and shot a couple pictures through the pinhole with it (ie: the worst possible use of a 17x13mm sensor)... but at least it's let me figure out that I still want to paint the inside of the camera with Black 2.0 because in addition to the unusable blurriness, I've also got whatever fogging is called on digital cameras because the plastic I printed it all with isn't quite opaque.
Anyway, that brings me up to date... just introducing myself since you apparently need to be a member for 30 days before buying/trading/selling stuff, so want to get that process started before I figure out what I need next (focusing loupe maybe?)
For the morbidly curious, here's the setup and resulting picture:
And here's the setup:
I've been doing vacation photography for years now, my primary use is for 16x20 landscape prints of the places we've been, and we slowly cycle through what's hung up around the home. I've been doing this for decades now, with one to three pictures from each destination.
I started with an OM-10, then acquired the better bodies and lenses over the years (at least one of each of OM-1, OM-2N, and OM-4Ti). I resisted digital for years until it was getting to difficult to get good prints made, and I moved to the Four-Thirds system. I went through E-1, E-510, E-520, E-620, and finally ended up on on the E-30, which has been my primary camera for at least ten years now. I never moved to micro four-thirds because it never really added anything I needed, and I never wanted to start playing lens acquisition again.
Well, when we were in Iceland, I lost my last eyecup dangling over Brúarfoss:
Irritatingly, this isn't the sort I would usually even bother with since if you Google "Brúarfoss", you'll find thousands of pictures from the same location, with many of them better than mine... which is why I was dangling off a cliff to try to get something different. Turned out the angle wasn't quite what I thought it was from up top, so the image was unusable.
Upon returning home, I discovered that finding parts and accessories for my obsolete E-30 has become too painful, so I figured it was time to change systems yet again.
After digging through all the various digital systems, nothing really struck me as well suited to my needs and reasonably affordable, so I decided to just get "the best landscape system possible" so I would never need to go through this again in my life.
Weeks of research later, I was very close to grabbing a Fuji GFX 50S when I realized that film isn't completely dead, E-6 isn't *that* hard to develop yourself, and 4x5 is just barely starting to become obsolete... meaning it's likely the cheapest it will ever be right now. Given that I take around twenty pictures per year, and print two or three of them, I could get a decent 4x5 system and use that for a thousand years before I spent enough money to buy a GFX 50S and two lenses.
Of course, I'm not 100% convinced I'm making the right choice, so I 3D printed myself an open source field camera, and bought the bellows, ground glass, and a pinhole "lens" from Standard Cameras to build something to play with until next year.
I've also acquired five film holders (though I also designed one to 3D print should I need to) and recently won an auction for a pre-anniversary Speed Graphic that comes with an Ektar 127mm F:4.7 in a Supermatic, a Protar V 3½" f:18(!) in a barrel, and a mystery lens missing the trim ring in a Supermatic with scale for f:7.7, so I'm assuming it's either an Anastigmat or Ektar 203mm. The whole pile should arrive Monday or Tuesday.
The lenses with shutters have solenoids on them, and there's what appears to be a Heiland flash unit to drive them. The Graflex has been updated with a Graflok back, and has the rangefinder with Focuspot, optical viewfinder, and a bunch of weird cables.
The plan is to keep the lenses (except maybe the Protar... I can't imagine what F/18 looks like on ground glass, and I don't expect to have a focal plane shutter in whatever camera I end up going with in the future) and sell on the rest, but I'm a hopeless packrat, so more realistically, I'll play with it for a while, maybe clean/fix various bits, then put it back in the case and pile it on the rest of my junk in the garage.
So far I've designed a mount to put my E-30 onto the back of my 3D printed field camera and shot a couple pictures through the pinhole with it (ie: the worst possible use of a 17x13mm sensor)... but at least it's let me figure out that I still want to paint the inside of the camera with Black 2.0 because in addition to the unusable blurriness, I've also got whatever fogging is called on digital cameras because the plastic I printed it all with isn't quite opaque.
Anyway, that brings me up to date... just introducing myself since you apparently need to be a member for 30 days before buying/trading/selling stuff, so want to get that process started before I figure out what I need next (focusing loupe maybe?)
For the morbidly curious, here's the setup and resulting picture:
And here's the setup:
