I'm a soon 50 year old guy from Finland. I have been shooting photographs for most of my life, started as a "real" hobby in the early 90:s by buying a second hand Pentax ME Super (which I still have and use). Back then I shot only color and had my films processed in commercial labs which were still plentiful and cheap. Come the 2000:s and I went digital. With that my photography mostly declined to documenting events, not much artistic ambition.
Then last autumn I dug my Pentax out of the closet, got some black and white film and Cinestill DF96 developer and started shooting film again, this time B&W and doing my own processing. Soon I got a used enlarger and started printing too and also got myself an old Meopta Flexaret medium format camera, a Kiev88 "hasselbladski" medium format and a couple of 35mm cameras more.
Then a couple of months ago I started thinking about large format. I watched tons of YouTube videos, read online articles etc. and finally bought myself a Graflex Speed Graphic Pacemaker on Ebay. I also got a bunch of film holders and a Fujinon 180 mm lens in addition to the Kodak Ektar that came with the camera. The camera was in rougher shape than I had thought with lots of corrosion but the essential parts are ok, it's light tight and even the focal plane shutter works fine now after some cleaning and oiling. There are some issues still, the range finder is not working and the lens shutter release cable from the body release is stuck but as I mostly use the Fujinon enyway I don't really need them.
I've put some 20 sheets through it so far, at first I had lots of problems with underexposed negatives which I believe is the films's fault. I'm currently using Fomapan 400 as it's relatively cheap (40 euros for 50 sheets) and it seems it is not anywhere near the advertised 400 ISO. I have to expose it for 100 to get decent density. I also don't yet have an enlarger capable of printing 4x5 but I'm working on a 3D-printed 4x5 head for my Durst M600. So far I've used DF96 as developer but I'm starting to experiment with pyro developers, I just developed my first film (120) with Pyrocat and the results seem promising. I also have some 510 Pyro coming from England so I can try that too.
This is extremely interesting, lots of new things to learn (6 months ago I didn't even know large format was still a thing ) and lots of pictures to take now as the summer is coming.
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