My Graflex Crown Graphic Special arrived today, in a large box marked "M&M's" -- leading to a moment of half-happiness, half-disappointment: "Oh, damn, no M&M's... wait, that's my new camera!"
I had to wait to unpack it because Ana wanted to sit on my lap for two hours, and she's been so angry at me lately that I let her do it and didn't knock her off to play with my new toy. I finally unpacked it after dinner, and Noel and I figured out how to open it up, aim it, and focus it. Focusing a view camera is a bit weird if you think normally: the image is upside down and backwards when it appears on the ground glass screen that you use to set up the shot. But it makes sense to me, largely because of my experiments with learning to write backwards like Da Vinci.
I'm going to go buy some film and take some sample shots this weekend. I'll be developing a roll of film in the darkroom on Monday, anyway, so I will be able to develop it then. I'm not sure if I want to develop my own film every time, but it can't hurt to give it a shot and see how much of a pain in the butt it is. Maybe I'll have enough time to do a contact print, too, if being in the darkroom for that long doesn't make me irritable.
