I hope this post won't be met with 'do a search' or 'this has been discussed loads of times' you people in here seem nicer than that
(and I have done
a lot of searching)
I've sold all my digital gear, which I fell into like a lot of people last decade, and have taken up my old MF rangefinder and loving being back into only 8 shots per roll slow and contemplative photography, and light meters I'd forgotten how much fun they can be. However for a lot of the shots i want to make the movements on a view camera would be very useful/essential - I like wild and wooly landscape work, usually having a hike to the photo site.
I'm currently developing my own B+W, sending out E6, and then flat bed scanning for an average contact type sheet before sending negs out to be professionally scanned if they are worth it, this is sort of working well at present.
Now the questions:
I need to get my hands on some cameras which isn't as easy as it sounds as all the local camera shops are almost purely digital, and my old fave shop that did all the film work has sadly closed down.
I think because of the need to walk a few miles before taking the pics might restrict me to wooden folding field cameras, but there are a few Linhof technikas around that come with 90mm and 150mm focal lengths which appears to be a good starting off point - will they be prohibitively heavy - do any forum members hike around with them?
I'd quite like to start by using a 6x12/6x9 back, I appreciate that there will be a steepish learning curve as I last used a view camera under close supervision around 20 years ago. I can process 120 myself, for some reason 4x5 looks tricky - I haven't a dark room (anymore) and when i search for 4x5 processing I see lots of people with problems and not solutions, can you get the equivalent of a day light tank for 4x5s?
I'm confused which back fits what, are they one size fits all for 4x5 or are there peculiarities between different body manufacturers? I have got the lens board issue sorted. Same question about interchangeability for the dark slides.
Lenses - am I ok looking at the ubitiquous Schneider 90 f8 (I'm discounting the 90 f6.8 as I may want to do 617 in the future), will that be too dark for focusing and composition? I did very well selling my 35mm stuff, so a nikkor 4.5 although heavy/more expensive doesn't look too frightening, would this be significantly easier to use?
Oh and if anyone is selling up and has a light view camera with some lenses - I'm interested!
Thanks for any help you can offer
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