My Toyo/Omega 45D arrived from KEH today and it is a Beautiful Thing. I don't know why, but I feel like a whole different way of thinking about photography has finally arrived at my door. (Both my lens for it and the recessed lens board are delayed thanks to the blizzard in the eastern U.S. so it will be a bit before I get to take it out.) Then again, maybe I *do* know why:
It is like the diametric opposite of my Whiz-Bang K-3 II. It's a bellows with endless swings, shifts, and tilts on both ends and a rotating back. Composition with it requires a very slow, templative process, the opposite of 8 fps. It requires separate metering (preferrably spot metering). Each exposure can be developed individually (or not). The resulting negative can be scanned (to go back into digital post-processing world) OR printed the traditional way in a wet darkroom. (I'm fascinated by both "stand development" and "Lith Printing" at the moment and learning more about both.) This camera has me pulling Fred Picker's "Zone VI Workshop" off the bookshelf, with a purpose. It embodies the romance of an upside down image projected upon a ground glass, under a focusing cloth, with the ability to manipulate the plane of focus as well as perspective correction at exposure time. With the addition of this new format, I'm as excited about photography (in all of its many forms) as I have probably ever been in my life. -- Life is too short to put up with bad bokeh. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
