The Necessities: A look into a 4x5 photographer.

[Peter De Smidt]

A 210mm F5.6 plasmat is a very useful studio lens. Any fairly recent version from the major manufacturers will probably be good. I have a Fuji 210mm NW, but I've used versions from a number of manufacturers, and all have been good lenses. Since there were so many 210s made, they are available for only a little money. A good lens to pair with it would be a 90-125mm large coverage lens. Again, there's lots of choices. Grandagons, Super Angulons, SW Nikkor.... Personally, I like 120mm, it's wide without giving the extremely distorted super wide look, and they're fairly easy to focus. 90mm can be very useful if you do a lot of architecture. These can be harder to focus, especially in dim interior light. If you're doing a lot of tight head shots, a 300mm would be nice. For field work, a Fuji 300c or Nikon 300M are very good lenses, but if you have a sturdy camera, a 300 F5.6 plasmat would be great in a studio. They are huge, but in a studio that doesn't matter, and the ground glass is very bright.

For starting out, developing BW film in trays isn't hard. I never liked doing this with 8x10 film, but 4x5 is no problem. I've had my Jobo for a decade, and it gives very even and scratch free negatives, but I haven't been following their price situation.

[dasBlute]

Thanks, i was thinking about getting the combi tank. what didn't you like about it?

My experiences with the combitank:
- slow to fill/empty
- PITA to load
- cheaply made plastic, sharp edges, easy to break

[E. von Hoegh]

im aware. im also aware that freestyle carries an e6 kit. i would mainly shoot just for the experience!

Are you aware that Kodachrome is not an E6 process film?

[pdjr1991]

Are you aware that Kodachrome is not an E6 process film?

Whoops i my mistake, i have ektachrome.