Last year at the PODAS Death Valley workshop I had the privilege of chatting with Mark Dubovoy on several occasions, and during the workshop he demonstrated the Alpa camera system, extolling its virtues.  The Alpa is considered a “technical” camera, very much like a view camera without the bellows.  As such you can do shifts to correct distortion, but can’t do tilts to increase depth of field (something easily done nowadays with multiple captures and Helicon Focus).  You work like a view camera, using a ground glass ... and yes, a black hood or bellows viewfinder attachment, replacing the ground glass with the digital back when you’re ready to capture.

I also was thinking of jumping into 8x10 format, especially after seeing the work of Rodney Lough and talking with him for about an hour in his new gallery in the new City Center in Las Vegas.  As good as my PhaseOne p65+ is, I’ll admit it hasn’t caught 8x10 film if you want to make really large prints.

I’ve opted for the Alpa, and should see a new Alpa 12max camera with 4 lenses the first of next week.  I’ll post some images as soon as I get them, as well as offer some of the reasons I want to try out this system (things like extra sharpness, perfect stitching using shifts so the lens never moes, advanced lens correction capabilities).