Pictures Of New Camera

In the first photos, the camera looks pretty normal. When you look at the last image, the 4X5 looks like a toy in comparison.

Observations:

the camera is pretty sturdy and sets up easily. At full extension there is a little sag in the rails (you can see it in the second last picture), still very useable, but you'd need to be careful loading film. I'd probably try and avoid this much extension. As this is about 600 mm., and the longest lens I plan on using will be a 19 inch, it shouldn't be a problem.

I have ordered a backpack for it - going with the people at photobackpacker.com and I'll tell you how that turns out.

My new used camera comes with a 4X5 reducing back (as well as the 5X7) and also bag bellows. I'm investigating getting a Maxwell screen for the back.

Today, a three tube, six cap set of 8X10 BTZS processing tubes arrived. I had thought to tray process the 5X7 film but I'm not good at it and have screwed up tray processing of 4X5 any time I tried it. The BTZS will be slow - I can only process one sheet of 5X7 per tube, two tubes at a time. On the other hand, I can adjust development as I go and to suit. As development times are around 7 minutes, to processs 6 sheets will take an extra 14 minutes - not a lot to get custom developing for every single sheet.

I've been talking with other large format photographers and almost everyone is shooting digitally as well, but they continue to enjoy large format, so we'll see. It was the printing that was always a pain, trying for good prints that were reproduceable.

I'm happy with inkjet printing for the most part, but at some point I'll try contact prints, just to see - going back to how I started at age 12 making contact prints from 2 1/4 film.