Well, I'm here since a few weeks and I already forgot to introduce myself:
I'm from St.Hyacinthe (since 2009), a little city on the South Shore of Montreal, Canada (but I lived in Montreal during ten years).
I'm 38.
Since I was in Highschool (in the nineties), I wanted to have a camera and shoot everything. But my introduction in the photography universe started only in 2002... or 2003 (I forgot) when I bought a Minolta X700.
So, I started with a film camera and since then, I never stopped doing films.
4 or 5 years ago, I bought a Toyo View 45G on eBay (a bit by bidding on it thinking that I'd loose it, and a bit because I was saying to myself: "why not?"). And it happen it was a big mistake: there was pinholes in almost every corners of the bellows! After negotiating with the seller, I bought a new bellows and he refunded it.
Two years ago, I changed the bellows, again. But this time, instead of buying a third party (Chinese) bellows made with cardboard, I bought a real Toyo bellows. And this one is still in superb shape today.
If I bought the Toyo in 2011 or 2012, it's only in 2013 that I really used it. The reason was that I needed to buy the stuffs that goes with large format. Lenses: 150mm Symmar-S, 90mm Fujinon; enlargers: Omega DII (not to be confuse with the D2) and Durst Laborator L1200; and tripod: Tiffen "chin breaker" and after Majestic.
Since I'm doing large format, I'm doing less and less smaller formats. Large format is waaaayyyy better than other formats available.
In 2008 I bought my first digital camera. I never liked it. I never liked the pictures I took with it, even when I was also doing it with a film camera. I always preferred the analog image.
I don't think that, one day, I will let down film photography, and especially large format.
Hope this introduction is well said.
And sorry if I made mistakes in what I wrote. English is not my main language, but French is.
See ya!!!
Jean-François AKA Jeff
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