Hello,
I'm trying to keep this as simple and as clear as possible:
My shooting gear includes 10D, 5D + pile of L glass which are my main workhorses currently. The style of photography I get paid for has changed dramatically in the recent months from ordinary studio shoots into architectural and product shoots and I've found my current gear completely inadequate. In other words, I'm missing the freedom of a view camera. I can't afford the time and money to shoot on film, so I'm hoping for an option to combine my current gear with some kind of slr-view camera monorail.
There are 3 options I've found so far:
1)
http://www.komamura.co.jp/press/LD.jpg Horseman LD - I don't know the health of this company (some claim it's dying), but at least they've introduced this very promising piece of gear allowing mounting of canon slrs with good monorail and large format glass (I'm planning on using rodenstock apo sironars).
2)
http://www.cambo.com/Html/Images/UL35-C1ds.jpg Cambo ultima 35 - This one seems like an appropriate choice too, though the price tag is imho a bit steep (although i love the robustness and fine tuning).
3) Sinar modular M-system - the price tag is darn big, but as a long term investment it would give me a modular view camera and slr in one package. Currently not a realistic choice.
My requirements for the gear are following:
1) as little limitations in terms of focusing (must be able to do macros and focus to infinity on as many lf-glasses as possible), as I'm going to use it for landscape,architectural and product work.
2) I'd love to have the possibility to convert the monorail into a view camera in the future, so modularity is a big plus. As many film and digibacks should be compatible with the monorail as possible.
3) compatibility with as many lenses as possible. I'm going to invest into the rodenstock lenses as I have a good experience of them beforehand, but I need to be sure that they are compatible with the system. Horseman LD stated that only LF lenses from 90mm and up are compatible. Does this mean that i'm unable to do any wide angle photos at all with it?
4) I need to know if using the monorail with a 1,6x crop camera is pure hell or possible. If i'm correct - it shouldn't matter if i use 5D or 10D, the only difference is that i need to take more photos when stitching with 10D (as the shift area is smaller with 10D). Am i correct or are there some other limitations i'm unaware of?
I dont want to invest into T/S lenses as I've found them to be far away from my needs and very expensive compared to what they give me.
Any suggestions about the gear are welcome. :-)