I'm huge in France!

**Shailendra** · 26-Mar-2012, 20:43

Well done, Austin. Your work continues to inspire

**Emmanuel BIGLER** · 27-Mar-2012, 01:32

Congratulations, Austin for your work.

Regarding your interview in French, as the saying goes "Nul n'est prophète en son pays" I do not know the equivalent in English

There is an amusing point in the French text, at the beginning, the View Camera is evoked, and correctly defined in French as "une Chambre Grand Format"; but the authors of the article consider that they have to leave the original English "View Camera" as an explanation, as if French readers of this forum did not know what a Chambre Grand Format is !!

Is this surprinsing ? Not really for me, since my interest for the large format and view cameras came from a visit to California, and the "shock" of seeing an original print of Saint Ansel's "Monolith" in the small 'private' museum dedicated to Saint Ansel in San Francisco in the nineties of the last century.
So, it is likeley that readers of this French web site, surfing the photo-web all day round, virtually meet "view cameras" all the time, and do not even know the exact term in French !!

Not kidding, "view camera" is perfectly ok as Chambre Grand Format. If you want to be more precise, you'll say: "une chambre monorail", if it's a monorail camera.
In Québec, people will say "Chambre de Campagne" for a field camera, a direct word-to-word translation.
I like very much the term "chambre de campagne", this evokes "pain de campagne", the big loaves of bread, country-style, "slow food", something authentic as our ancestors used to eat everyday, as opposed to the Parisian, modern and urban "baguette".
But "chambre de campagne" is seldom used by French-speaking large format photographers outside Québec.

All the best !