Hooked

So I took the Fotoman 45PS out on my latest excursion to Farm Niedersachsen. To say the least, I am completely hooked on large format.

Of course, the negative scans on Flickr don’t do the format justice; the relatively low-resolution scans I mate — at 1600dpi — have a pixel size of something like 7000 on the long side. This underscores my desire to return to analog printing, but that requires darkroom facilities I do not currently have.

As predicted, I cocked up once. I took a photo of a ruined desert hideaway — as featured in the book The Sheltering Desert by Henno Martin — and as I tried to re-insert the darkslide, something jammed, causing the film to become unseated. When I pulled the film holder out, the film was still in the camera. I have no idea whether the photo I took would have been any good.

While at the farm, I discussed with the Ahlerts the possibility of me spending a week or so on the farm, bringing a bunch of jerry cans and cruising around the place and taking pictures, especially with respect to tie-ins to the strange events of 1941 (see above-mentioned book, which is a jolly good read).

Now what I have to figure out os how to travel with large format gear…