The pictures below of melaleucas at Rosetta Head (Kongkengguwar) in Victor Harbor were my early attempts to start photographing my local neighbourhood in the Fleurieu Peninsula using the 8x10 Cambo monorail. This vintage camera -- it's an all metal Super Cambo IV from the early 1960s --- was purchased in the 1980s when I was living in Bowden, Adelaide. I came across it lying unwanted in a cardboard box in the corner of a camera shop in Semaphore, Adelaide. At the time this suburban camera shop had the Sinar franchise.
I only used the Cambo a couple of times in Bowden because there were holes in the bellows and the shutter was corroded. It sat in the cupboard unused. Around 2010 I renovated it: a new bellows, the 240mm Symmar lens was repaired and cleaned, the old "electronic" shutter was replaced with a second hand Pronto professional shutter and a wooden case was built to store the camera when it was not in use. I was ready to go. I was eager to reconnect with the large format photography in the Bowden Archives project of the 1980s/1990s, and to break new ground.
At this stage (circa 2014-5) I had no darkroom and no way of processing the negatives at home, even though I did have an Epson flat bed scanner to make digital files. I had given away the idea of a darkroom in favour of converting the negatives into digital files, processing the files in Lightroom, and posting the image on the internet. The idea was that selected images could be digitally printed for exhibitions using a master printer.
Old and new technology. The best of both worlds. I was excited by the possibilities being opened by this hybrid approach to print making in the 21st century.