I saw this little gem posted on ebay as an Ikeda Anba but knew it was something different. A little research leads me to believe it is an early Nagaoka Seisakusho 4×5 field camera but it may be another maker too. It has a lovely dark cherry finish with brass hardware.  It weighs a mere […]

My Dichro 45s enlarger head died a few months back so I was using a cold light head in its place. I had to use under the lens graded filters since there was no control for the color of light when using multigrade papers. I then found on ebay, for a somewhat reasonable price, a […]

I was thinking the other day about how I like the 5×7 ratio but do not really want to upgrade my kit to support 5×7. I rarely enlarge more than 11×14 anyway so I know I can crop and enlarge 4×5 to resemble 5×7. In the field it may come in handy to have a […]

When I first began taking images I used 35mm gear and printed them using a 35mm enlarger on 8×10 paper. My setup was small enough to fit in an apartment bathroom with the enlarger by the sink and the trays in the bathtub. It wasn’t too difficult to set up due to the dedicated enlarger […]

I feel I have a curse when it comes to shooting 90mm. Either the lens is not wide enough, the shutters acts up, or other problems abound. Despite having my Schneider Super Angulon 90mm shutter cleaned twice it still sticks at 1/2 and 1 second speeds. So I purchased a used 90mm  (3.5″) Graplex Optar […]

Often when I am metering a scene I record the EV values low and high and determine where to place them on the zone system scale. I usually use the average EV function of my meter and place it on f22 or higher as a starting point. Many of my scenes are shot in wooded […]

Details of the Appalachian Trail – Mushrooms in fallen tree. In a previous post I mentioned shooting with a fellow LF’er at the Byron Reese trail on the AT. This was also my first outing with the Chamonix 4×5 04N2 camera. We had barely begun to walk the trail from the parking lot when I […]

When I began my adventure into large format photography  I started with a big heavy Calumet metal C400 4×5 and learned quickly I did not want to travel very far with it. For a brief time I was able to use a Shen Hao 4×5 wood field camera which I really liked. My first wooden field […]

My first darkroom was a temporary setup in my apartment bathroom with a sheet of plywood over the sink and trays in the tub. It was cramped and kept me bent over so would get backaches. Fast forward 20 years and I took a class at an arts center about 20 miles from home which […]

My Ikeda Anaba 4×5 with its Schneider 180mm lens.   Update July 2017 – sold and replaced with a Chamonix 04N2.  See pictures and a review  HERE