With autumn arriving in South Australia  I have  started  to pick up my large format black and white view camera photography, especially the 8x10 Cambo monorail.  

The conditions are right: overcast skies, little wind and softer  light. Well, these conditions  lasted for a few days before  a cold, gusty  south westerly wind swept across  the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula.  

This kind of  large format view camera photography  has been in the background as I do not have a darkroom at the studio;  nor do I have access to one in Adelaide now that the Analogue Lab has closed.  My last session of processing sheet film was done in Melbourne in 2018,  using Stuart Murdoch's darkroom! 

However,  a solution could  well be at hand.  It looks as if Timothy Gilbert  at Stearman Press  is planning to go ahead with the  production of the 8x10 processing tray,  given the relative success of their crowd funding.  I can't wait to get my hands on one, given the success of their  SP-445 film system. 

The  covered 8x10 tray will allow  me to process the sheet  film in daylight once I have loaded the film  into the tray in the dark. So it  is a similar process to tank development of b+w roll film, though much slower, as I will only be able to process 1 sheet of 8x10 film at any one  time. I can wear that inconvenience,  as I only expose a couple of sheets in a photo-session anyway,  and there are largish  time gaps between my 8x10 photo sessions. Maybe that will change once I have  the Stearman Press processing tray. 

I have started scoping the local area in Waitpinga for possible locations, but most of the possibilities so far look drab and dull in digital black and white, even with  the soft afternoon autumn light.   The one above is an example.