Three years ago I had never used a large format camera apart from watching my dad using his father’s half plate camera. I was fascinated by the roller blind shutter screwed onto the front of the lens , mesmerised by the brass and mahogany and even at the tender age of 10, blown away by the quality of the glass plates. My mother wasn’t though – far too detailed. Years passed and I tried to find missing parts for it then in 1976 I left home and the wish-fulness of using that camera melted away as I was enticed by SLRs.

Going to University to study Photography brought all those distant memories back to the fore. In my first semester I acquired a Toyo 45C from the ex-lead guitarist for Shakin Stevens 1972-74. When he was not touring he was a professional photographer in Cardiff. How I  have used that camera since. How many boxes of Adox, Ilford and Kodak have I got through? My office is littered with familiar yellow boxes with Portra 400 or 160 on them.

Stepping back in time to proper sized negatives  5″ x 4″ was mind blowing and DeVere enlargers with lathe type controls in a proper darkroom brought squeals of delight at the detail and information that got revealed on C-Type paper. Then I had an epiphany moment. For three years I had heard the mantra – ‘drum scanning will reveal data you never thought you had’. Finally, after weeks of trying to get the best out of my Epson V750 Pro and Imacon Flextight scanners coupled with large format Epson printers I threw in the towel and jumped on a train to London to visit Metro. I handed over 8 of my most precious Kodak Portra 400 negatives to be drum scanned.

The result? It was like looking into the solar system with a fixed Hubble telescope. As it turns out, all 8 of these negatives were shot on a Toyo 45A camera which according to its serial number was made in 1974 and a Schneider 135 lens. I have lashings of other equally good images from the monorail but I doubt I’d have a roof over my head if I had all of those drum scanned.

Anyway, this image is one I could not get right with lower quality scans. I knew the data was there but Metro have pulled just about everything possible out of this negative. This is a small scale export of the final print sized at 110cm x 135cm.

It looks like Kodak Portra 400 and Metro are a marriage made in heaven. Free Range here I come!