Finished Mahogany Lensboard...

Right nice, Scott!

Bill Houghton, in cold, rainy Sebastopol, CA

>You may have a future as a lensboard builder - granted, a niche occupation, but I know there are a lot of folks getting back into large format photography, even as digital cameras become ubiquitous.

Re: Right nice, Scott!

Scott in Douglassville

>Thanks, Bill. You know, if it'd help mitigate the expense of 4x5 (and soon, 5x7) sheet film, B&W chemistry, E6 chemistry, lenses, etc, etc, I'd be happy. Somehow, though, I don't think it's gonna put too big a dent in the equation... ;^)

Re: Finished Mahogany Lensboard...

Dan Donaldson

>I wanna see a picture taken with the camera. An 8 X 10 negative would put any digital to shame for detail.

Well, it ain't 8x10, but...

Scott in Douglassville

>This is from a 4x5 which is a scant 1/4 the area of 8x10, but you can start to see (in a crappy scan from my $30 flatbed) the appeal of the larger formats (click the picture for a bigger version):

Great resolution

Stephen in Utah

>A friend of mine took this likeness. The exposure time was 1 minute 30 seconds so the patriarcial look comes from the situation. Wet plate ambrotype glass negative. It is mounted over a flat black background, velvet in this case. This is a compressed image, but it stands up under a microscope, NO grain.

There is a resurgance of old time photography. It is interesting that when cameras were first introduced you had to compose your picture at the back of the camera on ground glass. Then there was the view finder, then the Single Lens Reflex, then digital and again we are looking at the back of cameras to take a picture. Sometimes it is hard to improve upon the past.

Stephen Shepherd

You captured a great expression

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>on your model there. Sweet looking kid.

OT - Looping back to the past as we progress

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>Cingular is now running ads in this area (maybe everywhere, don't know) that they offer "fewer dropped calls than anyone else." A year or so ago, Sprint or someone was touting the clarity of their signal, that you could understand what people were saying.

I've commented to my wife more times than she wants to hear that the irony about telecommunications progress is that we're now thrilled when our phones work as well as they did 100 years ago.

Re: OT - Looping back to the past as we progress

Scott in Douglassville

>You don't know how many times I've been asked, whether shooting a Rolleiflex or my Super Speed Graphic, how many megapixels it is. I generally let whoever's asking peer on the gound glass, and their expressions are priceless. When they understand that the film is 4"x5", they get real interested. But they usually walk away clicking a few hundred pictures with their credit card-sized digicam.

The Mom-in-law has seen the light, though. Unfortunately, that means I have lots of printing to do for her... :^)

Just for grins

Dan Donaldson

>I did a bit of searching, and the sources that I found said that to get the rough equivalent to 8X10 film in a digital camera, it would be between 800 and 1000 megapixels depending on the particular film and lens.

For further chuckles and gaffaws... *LINK*

Scott in Douglassville

>Offered here is the BetterLight Super 10K-HS 4x5 scanning digital back for large format. Gives 416 megapixels RGB, for a 794 meg 48-bit scan. Top end.

Price for such a new-fangled (released in March '07) beast? $23000 US.


BetterLight Super 10K-HS 416 megapixel digiback

Looking good!

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>Yoy did a great job on it and you didn't loose any body parts;^)

Be sure to post the walnut one too!

Re: Finished Mahogany Lensboard...

Paul Kierstead

>That is some very nice work; your client should be pleased to use it. And it is fully within the spirit of the thing too :)

Installed in the camera...

Scott in Douglassville

>Well, the board got to its new home last week, and here it is in the Century 8x10:

And I've got requests for more now... :^)

Re: Installed in the camera...

Paul Kierstead

>Unfortunately you need to be logged in to see the pic, so most here won't see it. I don't know who owns the pic, so I was uncomfortable copying to my host.

It is looks great on the camera!

Image is fixed now

Ellis Walentine

>When you post a link to a photo, it has to be to the image itself, not some web page that has the photo somewhere on it, or else our software can't display the photo. If it doesn't work for you, forward the picture to me and I will take care of loading it for you.

Cheers,

Ellis Walentine, Host

Looks very nice installed!

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>You did a great job on it Scott!