The first image from the new scanback of the basement of my apartment block.

Formally, the dicomed gives wonderful detail - through having one pixel scanned by each of three channels rather than interpolated as it normally is, and through the fact the it can register eight stops of light in tonal latitude. (This is compared to seven for regular negative film, five for digital cameras and four for slide film.) Because of this there is more sensitivity in high contrast scenes, for example when you are pointing the lens at a light source. Unfortunately, the sensor - I think - doesn't have any anti-blooming gates on it, which means that when the sensor gets far too much light, the excess of light 'pours' into the next pixel contributing to the colour and value that. The result, which I've doctored out, is a big smear across the image from goes from the light source to the right.

Handling the camera is a very beautiful experience. Large format photography slows the photographer down to a crawl, the investment in time then reflects in the consideration of the image, in the subtle nuances that can be played. Also, the size of the image, and the nature of the lens give a very different play between the focus and the depth of field. There isn't the same dramatic jump from one to the other as there is in 35mm wide aperture photography (nor the inconsequentional depth of closed down apertures in 35mm), its more of a gentle almost invisible shift, it slowly, genteely but quite inexorably guides you around the various parts of the picture. Through it, everything seems more and less real. The detail begs you to believe in the particles of the world, a world built from atoms up but the subtle shifts which seem slightly different from and alien to our own natural vision question this and question overly simplistic empirical veracity.

The process of taking the shot becomes illusionary: as you look through the ground glass screen compares with the psychological experience of being in a camera obscura. The image floats in the glass, upside down, dim and very quickly fades away from the centre whilst you hide underneath a dark cloth. You need to continuously adjust your position to see different parts of the image, and to an extent composite them in your mind more consciously than with other types of camera. After basic composition, and whilst looking through a lupe this effect is intensified - you're dragged into a tiny fraction of the image, laterally scanning the flat tenuous image captured on the glass of a supposedly four dimensional world, hunting for the image.

Along with the eye moving the body engages with the scale of equipment, the continuous changes in environment - under the cloth, in plato's cave, and at the moment sweating in the horrendous heat - out of the cloth in the reality that looks similar but is disconcertingly distinct - and disembodying most of yourself to narrowly concentrate in the digital realm of taking the scan. After only a few adjustments the process of taking another 30 second 'polaroid' prescan becomes a symbol of the investment into the image - this shot took 30 minutes of setting up, 'exposure adjustments', colour balancing, recomposing, and digitally checking the focus before commencing on a 20-30 minute exposure.