Newbie from Denver...

[GhoSStrider]

Good Afternoon Everyone,

Just signed up here, and since there's a forum dedicated to this, I thought I had better introduce myself.

My name is Chris, and I'm a 26 year old from Denver, CO. I've been interested in photography essentially my whole life. My first "real" camera (ignoring a Point and Shoot Kodak) was a Mamiya/Sekor 500DTL and some M42 primes when I was about 10. I later switched to Canon FD, and stayed with that until about 3 years ago. I moved up to EOS Digital, shooting with a D60. I switched to Pentax Digital about 4 months ago, and now use that as my main system.

Along the way, I've played around in Medium Format a little bit (mostly with a Mamiya C330 system), and Large Format briefly (Crown Graphic). While I absolutely love the images that came from the 4x5, I never really got into too much. Now I'm looking at getting into LF with something that has a lot more in the way of movements. I'm thinking that I'll probably be going with a Sinar F1 here in the near future. I have a couple remnants of my Canon EOS stuff that I'll be selling to fund part of the purchase, so I'll let you all know what I get when that happens.

So far, while browsing the fora, I've noticed that this is a great place to hang out, and learn A LOT. I'm really looking forward to my stay. Thanks for having me!

Chris

[steve simmons]

Welcome. What are you interested in photographing? The F1 is a good studi camera but you might want something more portable for landscape work if that is what you plan to do.

There are good articles on this site to help you get started as well as on the View Camera web site.

www.viewcamera.com

If you do get the Sinar look for for their book on ther Sinar system. It will be the best book to explain their system.

steve simmons

[Walter Calahan]

Welcome. Have fun. Make images that you like.

[dagabel]

Hi Chris,

Welcome. I'm new here, too, and I also live in Denver. I have a Graflex Graphic View II as my first camera, and I've almost got everything I need with the exception of a sturdier tripod and a good loupe solution (looking to possibly build one a la the article on this site's homepage). Now I just need time!

Have fun, and perhaps we can engage the more experienced Denver photographers on an outing sometime.

Duane

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Welcome and always nice to have a few more folks from Denver!

Dive in and have fun.

Eric

[Ralph Barker]

Welcome to the LF Forum, Chris.

[Capocheny]

Hi Chris,

Welcome to the forum... you're definitely going to have a good time here! And, you'll learn a lot too.

So, you've not been shooting for the past 3 years?

LOL...Ok, ok, just kidding!

[My little nudge about your shooting digital. ]

The guy's will have you up to 8x10 in no time flat!

Cheers

[GhoSStrider]

Thanks everyone for the very warm welcome. I'll be trying a little bit of everything with the LF system, but my main interests are landscape type work, and railroad photography. I do plan to hike a little bit with the Sinar F1. I know it's not the best camera for that, but I've never been accused of bringing light gear on my hikes. When I climbed Long's Peak a few years ago, I had a Canon F1N with a motor drive, FDn 20mm f2.8, FDn 35-105 f3.5, and a Tamron SP 80-200mm f2.8LD in addition to all the necessary stuff for climbing to 14,255.

Should I decided that I do want a field camera to bring along instead of the Sinar F1, are there any cameras that accept Sinar lensboards?

Thanks again for the warm welcome!

Chris

[Glenn Thoreson]

Ah, Denver - land of my youth. Glad to see you here. Lots of friendly, helpful folks. Hope you enjoy it.

[Ron Marshall]

Welcome to the forum Chris. I have an F1. I have a Sinar to Linhof adaptor board on the Sinar and all of my lenses are mounted on Linhof Technika boards, about 1/3 the weight and much more complact than Sinar boards. It was $70 used at Midwest Photo. The F1 is not great to backpack with, so after a couple of long hikes I went with a 3lb Toho, which is a wonderfully competent little monorail. Now I only use the F1 as a 5x7 with a Norma rear standard and bellows.

Here is a link to a review of the Toho:

http://www.thalmann.com/largeformat/toho.htm