All the images on my site are shot on large format film, except one… can you pick it? I have many thousands of negatives of all formats from 5″x4″ to 35mm in folders all over the place… so much for organised security!
I’ve had a lot of fun with film, and used more than my fair share of it over the years. Time i moved on, so, about 8 months ago i bought my first real digital camera, a Canon 5D Mk II and i am loving it. I recently took it with me to Greece and i just had a ball, shooting HDR images (manually blended with layers) and stitched Panos with this awesome pano head from Really Right Stuff that i picked up a while back. This camera is not just my first real digital, its my first camera with auto focus! I’ve been sitting on the fence for quite a while it seems.
The last 35mm gear i had was a Leica RE with a whole bag of beautiful prime lenses, all manual focus and full manual exposure. I think the camera had some auto exposure functions on it, but i never used them, so i have no idea if they worked or not. I just sold this camera recently, it’s helping pay for the new setup.
I remember 12 years ago when i worked for Fremantle Black & White (Black & White lab here in Freo), and using one of the first serious professional digital cameras in the studio, it was about 1.5 mega pixels and hugely expensive. It had a viewing screen the size of a postage stamp and was awfully slow, but even then it was clearly the way forward, though it had a long way to go.

Check out the depth of field
A couple of days ago i picked up the latest addition for the Canon 5D Mk II kit, a 17mm f4L Tilt Shift lens. its a bit more like what i’m used to, being a prime lens with manual focus. Although it’s really designed for architectural style work, the tilt and shift capabilities make it ideal for landscape due to the almost infinite depth of field possible. I took it down to South Beach yesterday after work and had a bit of a play around, takes a bit of getting used to, but i think its going to be awesome for stitching pano images.
I think it’ll still be a while before i replace the 6 x 17 film camera, but not because i think it’s better than digital, rather, i can’t yet afford the camera that can replace it. Anybody want to lend me $50,000?

Both these images shot at f5.6