or spending as little as possible.
OK it's an argument that we heard a lot in the early days of digital but seems to have less validity now than it once did. Or does it?
One thing that irritates me about digital equipment is its alarming rate of built-in obsolescence.
My Nikon D100, for instance, is as out of date as the stone axe. It cost me a small fortune, has an appetite for batteries comparable to a teenager let loose in Macas with an all-you-can-eat voucher, yet still takes pics that in the final analysis lack the quality of my manual (batteryless) analogue Nikon F much less a sheet of 4 x 5 film.
That realisation led me to think about Rockwell's 4 x 5 option and how much it would cost me to get into it. The other attractive thought is that the gear would not be out of date before I shot my first frame.
I dismissed all monorail cameras as I want a camera for outdoors use and monorails are a pain to carry — they're heavy and few fold up to a manageable parcel. I also dismissed technical field cameras as I was looking at the smallest investment I could make and end up with a decent outfit, which has to include a scanner as I have to print digitally.
Rockwell uses a 4 x 5 Tachihara and an Epson 4990 scanner (the article was written in 2006 and he may have updated, I don't know). The camera is marketed under a number of names and costs $US645 from Badger Graphics (www.badgergraphics.com) as a Tachihara, and $US650 as an Osaka from Bromwell Marketing (www.bromwellmarketing.com).
Add a couple of cut film holders at $41.50 each, a Technica-style lens board and an Osaka f5.6 150mm lens at $450 and the total is $1,216 for the camera package. As the choice of the scanner is a no brainer, we have to add $800 for an Epson V740. Giving a grand total of $US2,000, say $A2,200. If you need to, a decent exposure meter should be added.
Buying the cut film holders and a lens second hand won't necessarily reduce the budget but spending $450 will buy quite a decent lens these days.
In the event, it leaves you about $3,000 change out of the price of a Nikon D3. Of course, the 4 x 5 isn't the available light camera that the D3 is, but then the D3 isn't the landscape camera the 4 x 5 is. Depends upon what sort of photography you do.
DIY freaks could save quite a lot more by going the Bender or Bulldog routes, but for someone who has just learned to make a simple rectangular frame it seems a bit too ambitious.