Last summer, I acquired a lovingly used and well maintained 4x5 speed graphic in perfect condition. Reading about large format photography made it sound difficult, but i was comfortable with the camera in a couple of hours and it only took a couple weeks to reliably get good pictures. The difficulty of loading, unloading and carrying film holders got annoying fast, film and processing is more expensive, and I'm not the biggest fan of the 4:5 ratio. I'd always been a fan of panoramic formats, a rollfilm back seemed to be a good option.

To go along with my AT-A102T tripod, i also bought (on ebay) one of Amvona's ballheads - the ATH-A01 - and figured some photos and first impressions might be useful.

While working on the supertele comparison it was quickly apparent that i finally needed a real tripod. A nice, solid, aluminum tripod would have done fine, but the ultralight backpacker in me lusted for carbon fiber. I rationalized that i would be more likely to bring the tripod with me if it were lighter, but i wasn't able to rationalize the $400 to $600 price of a name brand tripod.