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Choicecut posted:The only thing that concerns me is reading stuff on other photography forums that film is going to completely dry up and I'll miss the opportunity to try medium format. Are these people full of poo poo? People on photography forums have been saying that film is going to completely dry up and you'll miss the opportunity to shoot it ever again for at least ten years now (the Canon 5D came out in 2005). They are exactly as full of poo poo as the people who say that digital is a fad and film is going to regain its professional dominance, who have been saying that for the same ten years.
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Aug 4, 2016 13:47
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Karl Barks posted:if you got the money, learn on film, learn on large format. who cares. just take photos, imo. actually, maybe don't learn on large format. That's about the space of it. Fuji keeps discontinuing stocks without any warning or discussion, but it seems like most of that is a problem of consolidating their lines and making their bottom line more efficient, not getting out of film all together. I think availability of just about everything else has been pretty stable ever since Kodak discontinued its E6 lines. A Saucy Bratwurst posted:Well then why ask it of me except to be a dick. As I've said elsewhere, I'm a pretty big promoter of "you do you". As long as your kids aren't going hungry or something, if you want to learn photography on 20x24 Polaroid, more power to you. It's your money, and it'll be your camera and your film. You'll be the one paying for it, not me, and another person buying film is good for everyone who shoots it. That said, there are many reasons that the 35mm format (and even there, mostly 35mm SLR or point-and-shoot) has been so incredibly dominant - it's really versatile, and the quality is good. Every step you take away from that is a compromise of some kind - you improve one aspect of your camera by giving up a little bit on another. Learning what you actually want to do and choosing the gear that gets you there should be your first step, or you can spend thousands of dollars (even tens of thousands) collecting equipment designed to solve problems that you don't actually have, or maybe don't care about. GAS is fun and everyone's vulnerable sometimes, but if you've got it, own it for what it is.
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Aug 4, 2016 18:55
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A Saucy Bratwurst posted:Sorry for the e/n, sorry for making GBS threads all over everything. None of you probably care at all, and I'm expecting to cop a ban or probation for this, but I felt bad. Stress is not fun. That's pretty awful, and I hope you come back when you've gotten yourself sorted out a little bit better. On a "that which does not kill us..." sort of note, sometimes we do our best artistic work trying to cope with hardship. I'm not suggesting you start a project like Araki's Winter Journey, but if you find that photography is centering for you, maybe you should do some shooting for the drawer and see what helps or what comes out of it.
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Aug 8, 2016 16:20
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Awkward Davies posted:So my girlfriends father just gave me a roll of Kodachrome 64, and a couple rolls of Ektachrome (100 and 200 speed). The Kodachrome expired 1988 but it's been in a fridge. What are the chances it's still shootable, and can you even get it developed anywhere? It's probably still shootable, but the only way to develop it is as black-and-white. Resurrecting Kodachrome is one of these mad delusions that comes along every so often, but it's really only viable with the kind of industrial-scale chemical purity and process control that Kodak provided. Academically speaking, it's possible to reconstruct the process, but good luck: one guy in Australia has done it, and from his account it was like trying to reconstruct formulas from scraps of Necronomicon scattered into the four winds.
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Aug 22, 2016 17:45
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Awkward Davies posted:Wait this can't actually work right "This process is in the VERY early stages, no guarantee is made as to color accuracy, stability, or production of images. Images MAY have color casts or other unexpected results due to the experimental nature of this process." His sample images look OK, but expect Lomo-level results and maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised.
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Aug 22, 2016 19:06
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Clearly the best answer is to talk to Hugo or Keith, get an actual 30x60 camera made, and do everything as contact prints.
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Aug 30, 2016 08:19
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Awkward Davies posted:Here's a couple examples, sorry for the poo poo quality. This looks wrong to me. Fuji numbers their 120 1-16 (for 645), so their spacing is not the same as Kodak's, but there should be way more lead there than the image suggests. If nothing else, there's a bit of tape holding the "front" end of a 120 roll to the backing paper, to ensure that it feeds together properly. Even ignoring the numbering, if this were just a loose nut behind the viewfinder or an alignment error, you'd see its shadow left in the image. Cassius Belli fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Sep 2, 2016 |
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Sep 2, 2016 19:51
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Which one of you goons was carrying a big Fuji rangefinder around PAX today?
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Sep 4, 2016 07:22
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Paul MaudDib posted:I guess his handiwork is probably fine but I would have serious reservations about transacting with him at this point. It's not the end of the world to set him on my blocklist, but I guess I should have taken the whole crazy "don't email me if you're not going to buy a camera" rant on his website a little more seriously. And that's after he already said that he can't mount the lens you wanted? Was he expecting to talk you into something else?  indeed. You weren't kidding. I've heard Will Littman is similarly pugnacious, though in a different way; there's been a joke running around since at least the early 2000s that there's something in the 110 plastic or glue that makes people modifying them go crazy.Steven Icanberry posted:PAYMENT DETAILS (As an aside, he's a SovCit-style tax-protest type, so he probably insists on money orders and such to avoid leaving a paper trail for the taxman to follow. Just consider yourself lucky that he hasn't started claiming that you created joinder and are obligated to pay him or started filing bogus liens against you.)
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Nov 1, 2016 11:36
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mAlfunkti0n posted:Figured I would pose this question here since I THINK this film falls into the medium format category. Do you have any idea of about when they were taken? Are they cut individually, or part of a roll? Are the edges square, like they were originally sheets, or are the corners a little off-square, like maybe they were cut by hand? Kodak had some ridiculous number of roll film sizes in the early days, at least partly because enlarging was not very good and everything had to be contact-printed.
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Nov 2, 2016 16:39
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Quarter-plate film would be approximately that size (3-1/4" x 4-1/4"). I think sheet film was out of popular usage by '39, but quarter-plate would have been the most common size by far. I think it's cut from a roll, though. That bottom edge doesn't look like it was cut straight across (maybe it's the picture), and I don't see any notching that would help a photographer determine which side had the emulsion on it. It might have been taken from an old film pack; I'm not sure if those had notches. My next best guesses would be 118 (3-1/4" x 4-1/4") or 130 (2 7/8" x 4 7/8") roll film.
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Nov 2, 2016 18:15
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Paul MaudDib posted:The notch is a good point (although I have no idea if film of that vintage was notched). 118 rollfilm is a reasonable guess too. I have three vintage sheet-film negatives in my collection from around that time, the oldest from the late 20s. They're notched, but also 4x5. The notches around that time are very simple, more along the lines of a clipped corner or divot cut in one edge than the coded stuff we see today. It's more than possible that smaller sizes weren't notched, this was some lower-end generic brand film, or the film was shipped as packfilm (not sure if this was notched or not). As I think about it, the argument against sheet film ("no notching") is balanced out by almost the same argument against roll ("no edge markings"). It's a hard puzzle! Paul MaudDib posted:I guess I don't really have a comment on nitrocellulose negatives, I've never handled them before, but maybe like a lockbox or other metal container that's well away from anything flammable. Be very careful around flames, when nitrocellulose goes it goes like crazy. Your negatives will be gone in probably 5 seconds and IIRC it gives off toxic fumes as it burns. I personally wouldn't be *too* worried about nitro film; I think Kodak started using acetate safety film for their consumer side c. 1910. You usually have to worry more about nitro on movie picture stock, which used nitro because it was a lot cheaper and held up better to projection (until it went up in smoke). The major concern would be chemical breakdown; the early acetate films will chemically decay and become brittle. You'll notice them starting to take on a certain vinegary smell. Once the breakdown starts it's both irreversible and unstoppable, but you can delay it quite a lot by keeping the film in a breathable box with a silica gel pack. Keep sheets of acid-free paper between them to help buffer.
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Nov 2, 2016 23:47
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The space available in my fridge for actual food grows smaller and smaller. Somehow I'm not completely sure I mind.
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Nov 7, 2016 02:11
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ansel autisms posted:How do you shoot your 8x10? I have 18 sheets of astia in my freezer but I'm terrified to shoot it. Box speed? Worried about bellows compensation? I just got this little stash over the weekend and haven't shot any of it, but here's my experience from the Ektachrome G I've shot (not a lot, admittedly, but I was about as nervous as you are, and it's worked out well so far). In my experience they work about the same, for exposure: 1 - Start with box speed. 2 - Add the bellows factors I've outlined below. I do pay attention to it, but it's rarely as big a deal as the LFF Ansel Cult wants you to believe. 3 - If you're shooting film of substantial age or unknown storage history, it might be worth burning one frame to bracket. You can fab a set of masks to carve up one frame into pieces, or I can have an extra set made for you. I have a quick-and-dirty set I made out of cardboard, but I've got a TAP Plastics nearby and I'm going to have them make me something better - it's simple and surprisingly cheap. 8x10 can comfortably fit 12 exposures at 2.25" square, which is way, way more bracketing than you should reasonably have to do, especially if you're just checking for speed loss - any slide film that's lost three+ stops is probably so degraded and color-shifted as to be worthless anyways. Bellows factors: It's really not that complicated, and even for slide film most of it will be buried in the tolerances of your film and the precision of your equipment. The Nikon F6's shutter is supposedly accurate to less than .03 stop, but you're just not going to get that with a big Copal, and even less most of the older shutter designs - I understand that getting even within 1/10 of a stop is a pretty good day, and that's OK. Your film will eat it. Most of the time you should be able to eyeball your exposure to the next 1/2 stop and call it good. It's just like doing timing calculations for darkroom enlargements, but in reverse. There are really only two rules to remember: illumination area increases to the square of distance, and stops are factors of 2. Twice the area means half the light means one extra stop. 1 - Measure your extension to the flange of the lens (for LF lenses, generally the optical center, either the front or the back of the shutter - focus to infinity and figure out which, but it doesn't matter much). 2 - Calculate the extension factor ( measurement #1 / focal length of lens ). Telephoto and retrofocus designs will have different extension factors, but those are pretty rare. In that case you'd use the extension-to-infinity-focus as a "virtual lens length", and just stick a label to your lens board so you can remember. 3 - Square this. 4 - Take the logarithm of (3), base 2. 5 - Add this many stops. In practical terms, this means "add one-quarter stop for every extra 1/10 lens length extension beyond infinity". It's accurate to within three hundredths of a stop for lens extensions under 1.5x lens length, and pretty accurate to 2x lens length. My complete table of fudge factors looks like this: The notecard in Cassius's Camera Bag posted:Round extension up for print film, down for E6 * Beyond 2.0x, you can add 1/4 stop either for every .2x lens length (more accurate) or 1/4x lens length (accurate over a longer range). The .2x rule is accurate to within 1/10 stop up until 2.7x lens length, and the 1/4x rule is easier to remember but is accurate (within 16ish% of a stop) way out until a truly impractical 4.75x lens length. Bring a scientific calculator if you plan to go longer - and let me know what on Earth you're shooting with that much magnification. Full-sheet pictures of dandelions? Notice that this means, at normal 300-360mm-ish 8x10 lens lengths, if you remember "add half a stop if I can shoot it with a Nerf gun, add one stop if I could poke it with a stick", you're probably within 1/4 stop (closer than an old manual SLR will even let you go!) without doing any measurements at all. I've only found the higher numbers interesting when attempting crazy macro stuff, and even then I've never had a reason to test this - with any film - beyond 3x extension. The math checks out, but it's a pretty extreme edge case.
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Nov 8, 2016 17:06
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Meaty Ore posted:I'm looking at lenses for my Hasselblad. Are there any functional differences between C and CF lenses? My camera will take either. Some of the C lenses (the ones without the T* designation) are single-coated and more prone to flare than modern lenses. There are also some mechanical differences which makes repairing them a much dicier operation - Hasselblad has been out of spare parts for decades, which means that anything going wrong will require a donor lens (most of the repair guys will have a small library of them on hand, being cannibalized one or two parts at a time, but you do pay for this). The 'upgrade' to CFi/CFe lenses is only interesting academically; both lenses feature some improved anti-reflection coatings internally and a better shutter spring (which can be swapped into your CF lens at the next CLA), and CFe lenses can be used with the electrical contacts on the 200-series cameras. In practice you won't see any differences unless you're looking at large prints with a loupe.
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Nov 20, 2016 05:42
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Two exceptions to that guideline, now that I think of it, on opposite ends of the Hasselblad range: * Partway through the CF production run, the 40mm and 50mm lenses added a floating lens element that reduces distortion and improves edge/corner sharpness. The effect is pretty noticeable, though whether it's worth the money is still a matter of debate. * There are extensive mechanical changes in the 250mm and 300mm super achromats between the CF and CFi revisions, more so than with the other lenses, and I have heard that there was some slight optical tweaking to take advantage of some new manufacturing capabilities at Zeiss. The CFi lenses go for $5K+ now, though, so... good job if you're looking at those. Cassius Belli fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Nov 20, 2016 |
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Nov 20, 2016 16:14
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Would any of you goons in the Seattle area (or visiting soon) be interested in a 5x7 project camera? In the process of some other acquisitions, somehow I wound up with front and rear standards, plus a bellows in between, but no ground glass or rail. I've figured out how to get it back to working condition, and it's only about $100 in parts, but I already have a 4x5 and 8x10 and really don't have the time or need for the intermediate camera. Will trade for purely nominal considerations and a promise that it won't go to waste.
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Dec 9, 2016 03:39
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8th-snype posted:Ugh if I wasnt selling my 8x10 I would. What are you selling, if I may ask?
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Dec 9, 2016 20:07
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Paul MaudDib posted:signed, with love, You can pick a fight with anyone you want, but the Autist is one of the last people I'd say this about. The P67 critics aren't saying it's a bad camera or too complicated, just that they find the handle un-ergonomic. At the end of the day, some cameras or configurations don't work well with some people, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's why we tell people to get hands on a camera if they can, instead of picking them off of spec sheets alone.
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Jan 6, 2017 18:46
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fastbilly1 posted:Has anyone here sanded down a 120 spool to fit into a 620 camera or rerolled? My father has a first gen Kodak Medalist that I have been dying to put some film through, but they havent made 620 since 85. And despite years in handling film, I have never re rolled any onto a different spool. Sanding/filing seems like it would be the easier process. I am aware I can buy prespooled film and that is a better choice for this job specifically. But I am looking for options for disaster recovery and if I fall in love with shooting the monster. This page says that the spool thickness matters, which makes sanding a dicey operation. You can use a 620 spool for takeup with a sanded-down 120 feed roll, though, and if you need one or two I think I have a couple I can give away. I think they wind up spaced too far apart and the last exposure goes off the roll. Respooling is easy. Start by loading a 120 camera, and instead of shooting, just wind all the way to the end. Then flip the new spool back to the feeding side, and - do this part in a dark bag or darkroom - hand-start the 620 spool for take-up, making sure to pick up the untaped end of the film. Once you've done that and gotten one or two turns, you can put the 620 roll in the camera's take-up position, close it up, and wind it the rest of the way. Some 120 cameras won't accept 620, so in that case you can just use the feed position to provide tension while you finish spooling. It doesn't take long. Cassius Belli fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Jan 16, 2017 |
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Jan 16, 2017 18:05
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I travel with a Domke J2 Journalist, and in a pinch it's just big enough for a Hasselblad, three backs, a Nikon F5, and two lenses for each, though the F5 has to travel unmounted. A big Nikon zoom would probably cut me to one. It's just small enough to fit under an airline seat. My shoulder hates me for it, though not as much now that I got the postal-style strap pad.
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Apr 1, 2017 23:06
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I took a few frames of Ektachrome on a recent trip, but I grabbed the wrong lens while packing and wound up with slightly less than full coverage. Really I'm a little bit surprised at how well a purpose-built macro lens can perform at infinity. e: Hosting broken! Cassius Belli fucked around with this message at 08:41 on Jan 4, 2020 |
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Jun 9, 2017 17:05
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Crossposting from the film thread, since most of the good deals are medium/large: I just found a really good discount on (some) film, good through the 20th. eBay is running a 20%-off summer promotional event with some of their sellers. The PSUMMER20 coupon code is good for up to $50 off ($250 total purchase) from a small list of mostly uninteresting vendors. BUT, as it turns out, one of the sellers is Ritz Camera, which... you know, not the greatest store, but not (usually) a complete shitshow either. They sell (some) film through their eBay store. Shipping is free. It turns out that their Kodak pricing is a tick higher than most of the big vendors, but low enough that you usually 10-15% off with the coupon. Their pricing on Fuji is sometimes-OK, and their Ilford prices are unfortunately "beyond stupid", so no go there. Here are some of the better deals: pre:1 - All their 50-sheet boxes of 4x5 really good for Kodak pricing, which is to say "still a bit more expensive than Ilford, but at least not ridiculously so":
a - Tri-X 320: $110 - 20% = $88, price elsewhere $115
b - TMax 100: $100 - 20% = $80, price elsewhere $105+
c - TMax 400: $128 - 20% = $102.40, price elsewhere $128
2 - Portra pricing is very solid:
a - Portra 400 35mm 5-pack, $40 - 20% = $32, price elsewhere $38+ (Amazon price is $48, come on guys).
b - Portra 400 120 5-pack, $33 - 20% = $26.40, price elsewhere $30
3 - There's one good Fuji deal, but everything else is just saving 2-3%: Fuji Velvia 100 120 5-pack, $43 - 20% = $34.40, price elsewhere $41
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Jun 18, 2017 18:54
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Galway
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Jun 19, 2017 20:15
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Meaty Ore posted:So for any of you who have no close-by camera stores at which to buy film: where's the best place to buy film online in general? The big four are B&H, Adorama, Freestyle, and Amazon. The first three are usually within a couple dollars of each other, once you factor shipping in. Amazon is good with their supply chain, but really inconsistent on pricing - I've seen them be 15% up and 15% down from average inside the same week. I think Freestyle is the most committed to film as a full process and not just another SKU; at the very least they've had the best availability for chemistry (especially the more esoteric stuff), and the best willingness to ship it.
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Jun 26, 2017 06:13
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Hasselblad posted:Is a bellows worth the extra cash over extension tubes for close-up work? Going to be solely using the 80mm that came with the kit for quite a while, but the minimum focusing distance is pretty extreme. They don't really overlap very much in terms of real-world application. So... here's a quick rule of thumb for "normal" lens designs. 1 - At infinity focus, the optical center of the lens will be at 1x focal length from the film plane. 2 - At 1:1 macro, the optical center will be at 2x focal length from the film plane (at the expense of some significant light - you'll have to do exposure compensation). 3 - You actually want to undershoot just a smidge so you have room to focus back and forth in both directions. The 80mm CF has a bit under 9mm of extension baked into the helicoid. My set of Hasselblad extension tubes is 10mm, 21mm, and 55mm, though I understand they made a set of four with 8/16/32/56 set as well. With just the 10mm you can get from "unmodified minimum focus" down to about 10 inches on a side. With just the 21mm you can get from 'about 8.5 inches" down to about 6 inches. With 31mm (10+21) you can get from "a little under 6 inches" down to "about 4.5 inches" (notice how there are sharply diminishing returns here?) With 55mm you're stuck in a very narrow range "near 3 inches on a side". 65mm (55+10) gets you very close to life size and 76mm (55+21) is pretty much "there" - the extension in the lens will let you get the few mm you need and focus around it. Obviously these numbers are scaled back a bit if you're working with a longer lens... but that'll tighten your field of view anyways. I forget the specifics, but IIRC the various Hasselblad bellows will start a little bit past 55mm and go way out to something ludicrous like 200mm or something. Great if you're using one of the dedicated macro lenses, kind of crazy with the 80mm. The bellows are a lot harder to handle and really require a tripod, but you can use the 10mm or 21mm pretty decently freehand if you're steady.
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Dec 31, 2017 23:50
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Hasselblad posted:Wow, thanks. That is a lot to absorb. I saw a couple bellows with lens included, but $1k minimum was daunting. Seems like the tubes should do. Yeah, there's not really any such thing as handholding for 1:1, but you'll see people stick on the 10mm or 21mm alone to get that little bit extra under minimum focusing distance. It all depends on what you mean by "close up work". As a rule of thumb, you'll want to add 1/4 stop exposure for 10mm, 1/2 stop for 21mm, and 1-1/2 stop for 55mm. These are reasonably linear for the ranges you'll be working with, so for 31mm you'd add 3/4 stop, for 76mm you'd add 2 stops, etc. The 9mm of back-and-forth adjustment in the lens is pretty small by comparison, so I wouldn't worry about it unless you're doing critical slide film comparisons or something.
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Jan 1, 2018 05:43
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SMERSH Mouth posted:LF question here. The two sections of a Schneider 90/8 appear to be properly spaced in a Linhof Synchro-Compur #0 shutter, which makes sense since that's how they came originally. The lens is not properly spaced when put into an older 'just Compur' #0 shutter. I thought that Compur shutters of the same size would be interchangeable. What am I missing? How can I properly match a lens with the correct shutter if I am buying them separately? It depends. Some very old lenses were individually mated to shutters at the factory, usually by making the cells a little "short" and then fitting shims into the shutter body to get the spacing exactly right. Lose the shims and you're in for an expensive trip to a machinist's shop. Similarly, for a few designs (I found a reference to the Schneider Angulon 90/6.8, not sure about yours) Schneider actually milled out a few mm of metal from the shutters to let the front element sit further back. Modern lenses are much better about their quality control, so for them, shutters should be pretty well interchangeable.
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Jan 16, 2018 06:00
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Ektachrome in 8x10. <i>e: Broken!</i> Click for embiggening. Cassius Belli fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Jan 4, 2020 |
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Feb 21, 2018 00:13
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Helen Highwater posted:I bought a Super Speed Graphic today and I want to connect it to a strobe trigger. The lens has no PC socket, but the body has connectors for a flash cable. Looking around online, I can only find Graflex to PC cables that have two flat pins at the Graflex end. My camera has three holes that are small and round - big enough for a 2.5mm jack to go into, but not big enough for it to be inserted all the way. I can't find a cable that would fit this description. There are Graflex flash units on eBay, but none of them come with cables. Am I figuring this wrong? Is there a better way to get PC sync capability on the camera without buying a new lens/shutter? Maybe 2.5mm Microsync? That sounds strange for three holes, though. I'd send some pictures of the setup to Paramount Cords - they've probably seen it before, and if they have, they can make you a custom cord to handle the conversion. Their prices are pretty reasonable, considering.
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Mar 17, 2019 17:59
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Helen Highwater posted:Here's what it looks like from the manual. Mine is exactly like this. I don't have a flash though Yep, Paramount will help you. See the "Super Speed Graphic – Graflex" section. A basic PC conversion cord will run you ~$40.
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Mar 18, 2019 06:08
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Helen Highwater posted:Paramount could not help me. I ordered a Graflex X-sync to PC cable then they emailed me 6 times about it. The dude was super unprofessional and had no idea about anything. Eventually he cancelled my order because he couldn't figure out what to do and decided that it was my fault despite me literally giving him the exact dimensions that I needed. Who did you talk to, if I may ask? Their products are pretty reliable but there seems to be someone there who makes CS hit-or-miss at best (apparently calling is better, if not always practical). This said, now that we know what's going on, improvising a cord should also be relatively easy - it's just a matter of getting the right electrical circuit to close at the right time. Might be more shop work than you're willing to deal with, though.
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Mar 19, 2019 14:56
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Helen Highwater posted:I was talking with a guy called Jon. 25cm is a relatively short cord - probably best just to make it as a 1-foot piece with no coil section at all. On a scale of 1-10, how much do you want it? I'm willing to try proxying it for you if you want; drop me a PM.
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Mar 19, 2019 17:15
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MrBlandAverage posted:I have had and heard nothing but bad experiences with Intrepid products. If it's not too late, cancel the order and get a Crown Graphic instead. The extra ~2 pounds isn't that much considering each film holder is half a pound and you'll probably be taking more than one. My impression is that Intrepid is like the Lomo of Large Format. The defects and light leaks are "part of the charm", but you can work around them with some electrical tape and determined tinkering if you expect your light-tight box to be light-tight for some perverted reason. ( To be 100% fair to Intrepid, they seem to mean well and keep improving, but there's only so much you can do once you've accepted their design brief. )
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May 21, 2019 21:48
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ImplicitAssembler posted:I'll dig around for a loupe...seems to be about $100USD? Get yourself a 5X EMO Macromax (later rebranded by Leica). They're the best all-around loupe I've used, comparable to last-generation Rodenstock and Schneider loupes that ran ~$275, but they run $65-85 on eBay (add ~$75 Red Dot Tax if you're silly). At that price I bought (and continue to buy) extras in case anything should happen to mine.
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May 22, 2019 00:03
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alkanphel posted:The thread-approved LF camera is the Chamonix 4x5, which ansel autisms, MrBlandAverage, and me all use. Yo! alkanphel posted:It may be a bit more expensive than the Intrepid but the cost of the camera is probably the cheapest part about LF photography. As a good rule of thumb, if you haven't spent more money on film and processing than on the camera itself, it isn't actually your camera yet.
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May 24, 2019 16:43
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Blackhawk posted:Any recommendation r.e. Chamonix 4x5 camera types? N vs. F vs. H You've basically got the space of it. The H has easier-to-handle rear movements (  ) especially in the rise and fall. The F includes 'asymmetrical movements' (copied from certain Ebony cameras) but in my experience those tend to be useful mostly for landscape photographers. I do mostly people pictures; I don't have asymmetrical movements on my 8x10 and I rarely miss them at all.As for an actual recommendation... it's up to what you want to do with it. The 35mm SLR is so dominant as a camera style because it's pretty good at everything. The further you move away from that - medium format, submini, point-and-shoot, large-format, etc. - you can make your camera better at one or two things... at the expense of literally everything else. By the time you get to large format cameras (and beyond) you're talking about highly purpose-built kits, tuned to exactly the kinds of photography their owners want to do (not just in terms of subject, but also the kinds of movements they use or don't, the places they'll go, the amount of weight they're willing to haul around, etc). All three versions are going to be well-made, so the choice is really a question about what kind of pictures you want to take. Blackhawk posted:What kind of film backs can they take? I'm considering getting into large format and they're apparently the recommendation of the thread. So film holders are standardized, and just about any company's 4x5 holders are going to fit in anyone else's camera. Toyo backs are generally considered the gold standard, but they're expensive and relatively heavy, especially compared to lightweight wood ones. There are a couple slide-in roll film and Polaroid-pack holders, but they're expensive and sometimes finicky. Depending on the springs holding your ground-glass down you may or may not be able to use them (they have considerable thickness). Film backs (e.g. roll-film backs) are usually going to be International/Graflok style, and I don't know anyone making cameras that aren't compatible anymore. Here you remove the entire back of the camera (ground glass and all, just like changing between portrait and landscape) and put the new back in, then use the latches/knobs/whatever on the camera to hold it in place. You almost have to go looking for anything incompatible, and any knowledgeable seller should warn you if you have problems. That said, the Chamonix has ridges on the back (used for securing the ground glass protector plate), which make it incompatible with certain format-changing and Instax backs. These are extreme edge cases and I don't think you have to worry about that.
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Jun 15, 2019 01:51
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Blackhawk posted:Lion Rock on Ektar 4x5. First time I've done LF colour and first time using a spotmeter. I thought I'd underexposed a bit looking at the negative but it scanned OK. My 5 month old C-41 chemicals are still going strong (I've only put the equivalent of 6 full 35mm rolls through it so it should still have some capacity left). Huh. I usually don't like Ektar's tonality, but that's really, really good. I think it's the first time I've seen it live up to the promise of 'like slide film, but C41'. How did you meter that, if I may ask?
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Jul 8, 2019 23:15
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CodfishCartographer posted:More research for my LF shopping list: I notice the 45N-2 doesn't come with bellows, and Chamonix has "standard" bellows and "universale" bellows available for sale on their site, with little explanation of the difference between the two. Any recommendations? . . . That would be new. It should come with bellows. You can write to Hugo for clarification, though; he's a helpful guy. You'll sometimes want a bag bellows or something if you're using extreme movements (as the bellows material can get in the way) or an extreme wide-angle lens, and I've seen specially-constructed ones for working in heavy wind, but I don't know if there's a specific difference there. The Chamonix website posted:The 45N-2 comes finished in gray metal only and it comes with a universal bellows in either black or red.
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Jul 30, 2019 22:39
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Google Butt posted:Any suggestions for a loupe? After some research it seems like some people use +4.00 or whatever drugstore reading glasses instead of a loupe which makes sense, frees up your hand. Is there any reason not to try that? The EMO Macromax 5X loupe (later acquired by Leica and rebranded with a substantial Red Dot tax) is my hands-down favorite, to the point that I keep an eye on eBay for good prices and good copies to get spares in case anything ever happens to mine. Right now though the supply is a little dry and the price is about $150-200, roughly double what they usually go for. That's still pretty good (comparable Schneider and Rodenstock loupes were $275-300 when they were in production) but probably overkill for your first. This Fuji will be pretty good for the price. I've tried the reading-glasses and they're pretty good for ballpark estimation, but I have a lot of trouble getting really critical focus with them. Your experience may vary and you'll have to decide how important that is.
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Aug 1, 2019 21:59
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