A few weeks back, the new team at Mac Plastics organized a retirement lunch for me. I wrote about this previously on my blog. As a retirement gift they presented me with a gift card from a camera store. I decided to use that as a down payment on a view camera. I recently ordered and received this new camera. It is a Chamonix 810V camera in Cherry Wood. It is a folding wood field camera in 8" x 10" format. It is similar to my smaller Ebony 4x5 cameras, but on steroids.
I already have an 8x10 camera, but is is monorail camera. Very heavy and bulky and difficult to transport out in the field. As a result, I rarely shoot with it. This one folds up to a very compact size and fits into a moderate backpack. I have a kit set up that includes the camera, four lenses, meter, filters, cable release, darkcloth and two film holders. I haven't actually weighed it but estimate that it is about 25 lbs. This is lighter than the 4x5 kit I usually carry around. The difference is that the 4x5 kit includes about ten lenses, more filters, and a dozen film holders.
I don't think I'll ever take this out on a long hike as the two film holders would be the limiting factor. But for stuff that is close to the road, I can always keep additional film holders in my truck and cycle them through as I need them.
Last weekend when we had that mild weather out at Nordegg I took it out on a trial run. I shot an old building in the townsite, as well as a couple shots up by Abraham Lake. The trade off is that there are very limited camera movements on the rear standard, but this is more than offset by the benefit of portability. I look forward to creating some great images with this new tool.
No comments:
Post a Comment