Perhaps the eBay description should be, "Hasn't been used for the past two or three years, untested....."

This project continues, every month end it gets photographed and I am amazed by how long this discarded Pentax MG is taking to become one with its surroundings. Inside it may be a mass of solid rust for all we know, but outside it continues to resist the ravages of nature.

What I am reading above is contrary to what is general experience.

Slow films, such as Pan F, have very little latitude and high contrast, making exposure very critical and making scenes with high dynamic range very difficult to capture. Changes in processing can affect this and there are techniques for all sorts of subject matter.

Faster films, such as HP5 or Tri-X have much wider latitude and are lower contrast.

Colour negative film has the most range, around 7 stops. Colour transparencies will offer around 5 stops.

Now contrast that with a digital camera that might produce a dynamic range of 11 or 12 stops. We are thoroughly spoiled.

I have a friend who owns an old bus. It's in a museum and he spends quite a bit of time there. It's quite interesting seeing all the old buses I used to travel on in days of yore....

You need some nice little 152mm cubes, available from Amazon. These qualify as small parcels. I buy them for about £26 per 100.

Another removed, shot in July. We were doing very well up until then!

I know that was tongue-in-cheek Philip, but what equipment you use is really not material either, as long as you lke it.

However, as we know we are actually on Pentax User, so it's odds-on we'll be using Pentax gear!

Maybe it's just the way you're thinking about Photoshop? If you think first and use PS to polish and prpare the image would that fit your approach better?

Yes, we're learning more than we ever did, and more quickly as well.

I need Photoshop to set the contrast and brightness levels, to crop, to resize for the required end use, and indeed to add effects when I want to. All these are legitimate things to do and made rather more comfortable to do that when I had the darkroom. I now sit in a Comfy Chair with coffee on tap rather than standing up all day surrounded by chemical fumes.

The ethos of photography is to produce great images, how we get there is immaterial.

Maybe it's busy writing the images to the card? Or, if they are long exposures, maybe it's busy doing the dark frame subtraction?