For work and pleasure, I have started into large-format photography. I am a long-term film user, starting with a hand-me down Voigtlander Vito II in the late 1960's, and developing and printing black and white negatives and prints and some E6 color slides soon after (my aunt had a nice darkroom, and my dad was a professional photographer - weddings and such on the side). I don't mind the slow process of film photography involved with large format. Over the last several years, I have mostly used color slide film (lots of Kodachrome until recently) so my darkroom skills are very rusty.

My work takes me outdoors most of the summer (I am a research plant ecologist) and work-related pictures are typically for scientific purposes. Sometimes my photos are published in science journals and a calender or two. Repeat photography of old pictures, to show change over time, is one aspect of my work where large-format is advantagous, because the negative contains so much detail that is important for interpretation.

For pleasure, my photo subjects are landscape, wildlife, and vegetation. I am an avid alpine mountaineer and backcountry skier, so many photos are in those settings, and necessarily with a 35 mm.

I recently bought a Meridian 45B, and have and will likely use it for black & white landscape photos, concentrating on winter scenes in the mountains to begin with.

By the way, I need an empty 4 by 5 film box so I can send some film out for processing. Does anyone have a spare box? I'll gladly pay postage etc.


P.S. I see the acronym "PM" on these posts for communication. Is that just email or something else?

From what I have read, there are many helpful and knowledgable folks on the LF Photgraphy forum.

Thanks.

Mike Merigliano