<p>Hi,<br>
I've been lurking around photo.net for about a month now getting lots of questions answered just by reading the forums. Finally, I decided to join and post a question..<br>
By way of introduction... I've been having a lot of fun for the last year and a half with a DSLR -- learning/relearning photography... Mainly I've been spending time on composition and started off using the camera in auto modes -- mainly P... eventually progressed to A as I wanted to play with dept of field, and then on M. And thinking about it, I realize I became dependent on three things : I can shoot hundreds of shots at no cost, auto focus, and auto exposure... which are not bad things per se..<br>
Through a chain of events that started with someone giving me an old 35mm film camera, I got interested in film ... I also dug out 2 of my old cameras...with a plan to shoot one roll each... I shot a roll of BW film on one of them -- it has a broken meter.. so I used my DLSR meter to get a starting point for speed and aperture and then did guess work... I developed the negatives myself (I learned quickly that its hard to get anyone to process locally -- at least around where I am everyone is geared to take film and produce CDs--- one shop will give you back negatives but it takes days)... Well the negatives came out purple (I've read the threads on that) and in the end I had one good shot -- the main problem was I'm unable to focus by eye.. but that one shot had a look that I know I could not get out of my DSLR without some sort of film simulation... I got hooked...<br>
I started by using my flatbed scanner to scan the negatives and bring them to digital... but I also wanted to make prints.... more chains of events led me to cyanotypes... I laser printed 8x10 digital negatives and made what I think are some decent cyanotypes -- hooked again...<br>
the next step in the chain was scanning 35mm on a flatbed is generally a problem... So I decided to go larger and arrived at a 4x5 pinhole camera --- no need or way to focus and a great match for contact printing to cyanotype. a pure analog process (I even bought an analog ambient light meter)<br>
With the pinhole camera I'm learning about how meters really work, exposure, film reciprocity, handling sheet film in film holders, and how to take the time to compose the image in the camera without even a viewfinder. <br>
I realized I'm having way more fun working with 4x5 negatives than 35mm...(and my DSLR is worried) and it got me interested in large format in general... That lead me to buy an old Graphic View II that I know will lead to more fun and more knowledge of photography....</p>