The Man on the Silver Mountain

Today has been another non-stop manic one! Off to Sheildaig and Torridon, not a huge amount of work… but a lot of driving! What should have been a quick edit once back got bogged down in emails, corrections and retouches so I haven’t finished off as early as hoped! We are there now though, and I have even finished(ish) the edits for the medical aesthetics company which has taken rather longer than anticipated! This is what happens when you venture into a new area though!

The Bronica SQ panoramic back arrived today - there isn’t a camera for it to go on yet, but as I suspected… the insert is pretty much identical to the ETRS one! I removed a single screw and nut from the ETRS back and in it popped absolutely perfectly! It was half the price of the actual compatible one too… and I have the intention of getting an SQ-A in the near future anyway as I want to explore the 1:1 aspect ratio which is the absolute antithesis to what I shoot now. Changing things up in this way is a really good way to get the compositional mind working leading, hopefully, to more thoughtful art. For the moment, however, the SQ insert is loaded into an ETRS back with a roll of Ilford Ortho Plus! If I can get the roll of HP5 finished in the home-made pano back and this one finished too then it will be interesting to compare the results from both (along with the 120 HP 5 which I am now thinking I will follow with a roll of 120 Ortho if I have one left! Shame I don’t (yet) have a spare ETRS 120 back! I like the idea of doubling up on everything and perhaps running a colour and black and white roll of film in each format concurrently… but we shall see!

25th August 2026