Oh blimey! What's this? A monster camera. Why why why..? A look below should tell you why. I had the Yashica Mat but, well, it was just plain difficult to use, and "only" gave up 6x6 negatives, and I often found that I was cropping those images into either landscape or portrait images and so much of the medium format acreage was going to waste. I did some looking about and found a series of cameras that I had simply never heard of. I'd heard of Fuji, of course - indeed I had bought a Fuji GS645S camera some time ago - and I knew Fuji were renowned for producing excellent lenses. At the time I began looking, the 6x9 Fujis were not too expensive as they were under everyone else's radar too. I wanted to get into more considered, perhaps even formal, photography. I prefer 35mm for the grainy sense of immediacy, but I could see the clarity and sense of purpose of larger format photographs and wanted to give it a go. Stephen Shore's large format images are tremendous records and, surely, I could look forward to having a bit of that! I mean, 6x9 is HUGE!
I bought my 690II from a seller in Japan, and all seemed well until I got the camera here after paying the dues and so on, only to find it didn't work. It was a lengthy story, but I chose to get it repaired here in the UK and got into a discussion with the seller but, now I come to think of it, I don't think anything actually ever did come back from them. Well, the world's got more on its plate than this so I've let it go.
I did try a bit of black and white in this camera, but I preferred the look of 35mm for black and white, so I bought a roll or two of Portra 400 and was hooked. Now, of course, what with everything going on, I've had a roll in the camera for months on end and it'll probably be there for months more, but we can't help that. I'll get back out there.
