It has been an age since we had a new bag to feature, so we might as well do something big. And this bag is huge! I am not envious of carrying this one around for a day. Well done, Quentin, this is a great setup.
Hi there. I’m a photographer from Tours (France) and my birth name is Quentin Bouton.
I work as a live-sound engineer and play music in the band Rodinal as well.
My photographic journey began in 2005 when I followed a course in analog shooting and printing during my cinema studies. I have been shooting 35mm ever since, commencing with my beloved parent’s canon AE1 and then acquiring a more serious camera. The discovery of medium format was an intense joy. I had the chance to borrowed a, now mine, insane kit of two mamiya RBs with a lot of lenses and accessories. I takes me several missed rolls and shots to domesticate but everything works fine between us now.
As a left-eye shooter, my nose have to be flexible. Despite a brief incursion in the rangefinder-world with a canonet, I mainly subscribe to the reflex’s philosophy even if I dream of a Fuji 645 sometimes.
My photographic work concentrates on landscapes and architecture and is almost totally black & white. Less frequently I shoot portraits of my friends and artists I work with and very rarely, I shoot color films. There are very few humans on my pictures but most are talking about them.
I have shot a good quantity of Tri-X and now trying new options for obvious cost reasons. For color films, my heart goes to expired and inversible ones
The stuff:
I try to take my Leica R4 everywhere I go. It rests in a small military bag which was originally suited for a soldier’s canteen of Czech or Hungarian army. I always have a fresh roll inside and a couple of batteries as the R4 don’t have the temporized meter shutdown option and it’s common for the camera to be measuring the light…in your bag! I bought the Leica with an elmarit 28mm which I swap with a more recent elmarit 35mm depending the mood.
For the RB67 I previously had a classic shoulder-strapped bag which was a pain due to the important weight of the system. A bandmate/photographer/bff of mine let me use his Lowepro protactic 450 for a trip in the Pyrénées mountains. I immediately bought one for me after as this is the perfect companion for medium format field-photography, transforming minutes of setting-up into seconds and nicely distribute the load on both shoulders and hips, permitting longer explorations. This told, I will never take the RB on a real hiking trip, you know, I dream of a Fuji 645 sometimes…
The RB usually travels with two lenses. I use the Sekor 50mm as my go-to lens but always keep another around. The Sekor 180mm is my all-time favorite, very sharp and useful to catch landscapes details. I have three film backs, allowing me to quickly reload and switch between types of films, I’m still impressed by this abundance of luxury. My cell is a Sekonic Flashmate L308S that has the only particularity to come in a sexy color. Most of my 6×7 shots are made with a Manfrotto 055 stand with 029 turret but I like to use the left hand grip for street-photography occasions. Add to this a ton of little useful things: air-blower, flexible release, lens-cleaning paper, caps and so on.
You can watch my work here at the rhythm of one picture a day.
https://www.instagram.com/madameconscience/
Thank you for reading and please excuse the quality of the photographs, I’m not planning to get a better phone or a digital camera as I’m saving money for a Fuji 645 :)
Keep them coming folks, we need more submissions, so get your bag on Japancamerahunter.com
Send me a high resolution image of the bag. Optimum size is 1500px across. Please ensure there is a bag in the shot, unless you don’t use one. The more you can write about yourself the better, make it appealing and tell us a story. Snapshots of your gear with a camera phone and no words will not be featured.
Oh and don’t forget your contact details (Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, Grainery et al). Send the bag shots here. Not all make the cut, so make sure yours is funny/interesting/quirky. And please make sure the shot is of good quality, you are a photographer after all.
Cheers
– JCH
