Hello from SW UK

Hi all!

I have been getting into film photography for a bit over a year now, starting with my dad's old AE1-Program and about 6 months or so ago now picking up a Bronica ETRSi, and now the creep has advanced to the point where I feel like dipping my toes into yet larger formats as I have found an appreciation for the physical nature of film photography, and fancy even working on reversal processing BW film once I work out whether I want to make that formula myself or use an off-the-shelf kit.

There are clearly many ways to get into LF, but I have found myself looking at folding cameras like the Toyo 45A as well as the Intrepid offerings. My use case would probably see me wanting to do night work and especially (as is my main photographic focus even on digital) astro work.

This being the case I feel like I would need both a camera which is easy to "zero" in terms of rotating motions, as astro work requires very precise focus and I know from my tiny-format sensor attached to telescopes how annoying it can be to get an accurate enough alignment of sensor to focal plane, and optics to focuser axis. I would also be looking for a light tele (I suppose 300mm?) as well as a normal and ideally a focal length roughly equivalent to 24mm on a 35mm camera, as I would like to do landscape work and star trails as well.

For at least the telephoto lens which I suspect would be my main astronomy tool, I would suppose the most important factor is maintaining the most consistent sharpness and illumination at the fastest speed my wallet can keep up with. I think I would have to evaluate budget as a matter of probably £600 for camera, and then solve the lens matter one at a time.

I have been wondering whether 4x5 or 5x7 is the best fit for me. I don't fancy C41 film much but I do think i'd like to shoot the odd colour slide (provia ideally), which seems (as far as I've noticed) to be only available up to 4x5 size, and is so expensive I probably couldn't stomach paying for a larger size of it anyway.

Any recommendations for my impending plunge are greatly appreciated and I look forward to contributing images and discussions soon.

Thanks