I didn’t really have a happy relationship with the Linhof 612, despite it being a camera I’d wanted to use for well over a decade before I bought the first one. I was drawn to the camera through the works of one of my earlier influences, New Zealand landscape photographer Andris Apse. He was a great exponent of the Linhof, or more precisely, the 612 format. I originally discovered his work shortly after I started working with the Hasselblad XPan, and immediately felt that the 612 format was often more to my taste than the wider 24 x 65 of the XPan*. Also, the Linhof 612 lenses all have a built-in 6mm positive shift, which can be a huge plus in landscape photography. And the camera body has a tripod socket on top, as well as beneath, so that you can invert it to get a 6mm negative shift.