My Christmas Present Has Arrived !!!

Intrepid View Camera with Schneider Super Angulon 75mm f/8 lens

My wonderful wife surprised me this Christmas with a totally unexpected and rather fantastic gift, an Intrepid 4x5 view camera.  She had taken advice from the inspirational Simon Larson about what kit was needed and also provided a fine Schneider Super Angulon 75mm f/8 lens.  Although this is a brand new, hand-built camera the design goes back to the early days of film photography.  Once upon a time these large format cameras were state of the art and many current day photographers would argue that theys till produce the best images.  Thefilm is 4x5 inches in size, much larger than the more common 35mm film we are all used to, and certainly a lot lerger than a modern digital sensor.  Hence, you get incredible clarity and the negatives can be used to produce very large sharp printed images.  Not only that the front element, which moves in and out to focus, hence the bellows, can also be move sideways or tilted and swivelled to adjust the perspective and the focal plane, allowing a wider rnage of in-camera manipulations to achive enoprmous depth of focus and overcome wide angle distortion for example.  Below are some images I took of the camera this lunchtime.  I look forward to trying it out, maybe this weekend but it will be a while before you see any results as my next step is to set up a dark room to develop the film.....  Happy Days.