rodeo_joe1

I'm still not sure why everyone is plugging the D850, when (on paper) the D780 has at least a one stop advantage in low light capability. It seems to me that the OP is after cleaner pixels, not more of them. WRT post-processing: that can indeed make a big difference - provided you shoot RAW. Because there's not much you can do with a JPEG that's already been mangled by bit-reduction, with default sharpening, applied tone curve and compression artefacts added.

I've always used a 2 bladed masking frame. 4 blades seems like an excessive amount of adjustment (and bearings to get sloppy). You can just reposition the whole frame on the enlarger baseboard to centre the image. If borderless is wanted, you guillotine off the borders after the print is dried. Also, borders give you some handling area for processing. You've got to have somewhere unimportant for the print tongs to scratch!😲 Anyway. Even allowing for a supposed resurgence in darkroom use, the number of darkrooms abandonded or dismantled, to those being created, must still be hundreds to one. So somewhere out there, there are thousands of unused masking frames. They do tend to get rusty if not looked after though.

Looking at the MSDS for that liquid electrical tape, some of it's got some pretty nasty solvents in it - Xylene and Toluene for example. Not sure if they're legal for general sale in the UK and Europe. But, yeah, there are quite a few black sealant alternatives that stay flexible after curing. There's roofing and flashing adhesives as well... if you want half a gallon at a time.

Have to? Surely the sensible thing to do would be to stop using obsolete cameras? There's plenty of alternative old cr*p out there! And one cheap meniscus lens is just as smudgy as the next.

Nope. At the maximum zoom on my phone, I can't see much grain at all. The sea, sand and skin tones all look smooth enough to me. A tiny bit speckly, but about what's expected when there just aren't that many photons hitting the lens. What I can see though, is some terrible decentring of the lens used. With the lefthand-top side of the image having coma streaking that's not present on the righthand side. Is that the 14-24? It shouldn't be that 'streaky' and not in only one corner. My priority would be to repair/replace that lens, rather than buy a new camera body. A good, quick and easy test for decentring is to shoot a scene normally, with the focus and exposure locked on manual. Then shoot the same scene and framing with the camera turned upside down. All 4 corners should look practically identical when both frames are compared. It's actually a pretty harsh test that only a really well-adjusted lens will pass. OTOH there shouldn't be a gross difference between opposite corners either.

Never heard of liquid electrical tape. I'll research it. I've had some success repairing bellows using a mixture of latex glue (Copydex) and black Indian ink - about a 60/40 mix of glue to ink. It was thick enough to seal a few worn corners on an LF camera bellows, and the latex glue kept supple enough for the bellows to fold properly. Literally used as a stop-gap measure until I could fit new bellows.

No, I definitely meant the D810, which the OP has. It was introduced 2 years after my (totally adequate IMO) D800, so I'd expect some improvement in performance; even if that's only a better software noise-reduction algorithm. If I was to recommend a camera upgrade it would probably be to a lower pixel count 'sports' body - like the D780. If low light performance is all that matters.

If it clamps the paper down flat, then it can't really be 'borderless'. However, 4 thin blobs of BluTak really would be borderless at about 1/100th of the cost.

That's not true. I immediately noticed a great improvement in my D800 over the D700 shooting handheld at dusk and in low light. The dimmest area I could find at short notice was the inside of my kitchen food cupboard with the room lights turned off. Exposure was 1/50th @ f/2.8 and an ISO of 12800 (Hi 1.0) - Here's a 100% crop from the D800 - And from my D700 with the same settings - It seems obvious to me that the D800 not only has better resolution but far lower noise. I would expect even better performance from a D810. To be honest, I'm not sure what you're expecting. Because a few years back this is what you'd be getting from 400 ISO film at a similar enlargement - The D810 will be giving you between 16 and 32 times more light sensitivity for a similar amount of noise. Flash silly? Depends how you use it. Bounced it can give results much better than ambient artificial light. Not only that, but because its CT is close to daylight, you're not increasing noise by boosting the blue channel to neutralise an orange incandescent lighting cast. So for situations where flash is permissible or practical, a powerful speedlight (=> 75 watt-second) is worth more than a more expensive camera.

Always assuming the OP has a darkroom and enlarger.

As already mentioned, even after rewinding the film onto its original spool, the frames aren't going to line up perfectly - or even close. Doubtless the end result is only going to be scanned to a digital image, so why not combine the images digitally?

I can't find anything spelt "Sybersync". Do you mean the Paul C.Buff Cybersync? Two things spring to mind. 1. It's a simple mechanical connection issue; such as a dodgy hotshoe. 2. The Cybersync uses common WiFi channel frequencies, and is therefore going to be prone to interference from WiFi routers, etc. IMO it's madness to use the crowded 2.4Mhz band for something like a flash trigger. The ~350 MHz band is less crowded and has a better range/power ratio. It may not be strictly legal in some parts of the world, but who's going to catch you? A few milliwatts 500us pulse every few seconds is hardly a major RFI hazard, and almost impossible to triangulate and track down!

Maybe not, but Leitz would hardly tool up for a one-off 90mm lens just to fit to a rollfilm prototype. Quote from Oskar Barnack's brief biog. on Wikipedia: "Existing Leitz and competing Zeiss lenses were either too large for the camera or would not cover the 24x36 frame." That sounds as if it was known that Barnack had no qualms about experimenting with other maker's lenses. And Leitz at the time (before the Ur-Leica) had no camera products on offer - certainly not in a rollfilm size.

Never actually tried this, so take it with a large pinch of salt. It's just a "get you started" idea. How about a sheet of glass or perspex or similar, with a tacky surface to hold a sheet of film to it? Double-sided tape might be too strong and crease the film during removal. It obviously needs a bit of experimentation. Also, there's not a lot of difference between 9x12cm and 5"x4". In fact some double-dark slides will accomodate either size. There's also Grafmatic backs that hold 6 sheets of film, and might be adaptable to the camera. However, you need a degree in puzzle-solving to work out how to operate the darn things. Even then the risk of a double exposure or total fogging of all 6 sheets is quite high!

The non-working Weston V doesn't surprise me in the least. Fully working Westons from the model IV onwards are like hen's teeth. Best bet for a working Weston is to look for a model iii. This was the first revision to be calibrated in ASA speeds, rather than Weston speeds, and the last to have a robust and properly varnished Selenium cell. If you're lucky you can find a model III with an invercone & ND baffle kit. Even luckier to find the larger leather case with special compartment to hold the invercone and baffle.

Taking those questions in no particular order. They'd be dry plates. Wet plates wouldn't be used for that size and style of camera, and the use of wet plates was almost completely obsolete by the start of the 20th century. Plates are sized by their overall, outside, dimensions. It's always the slower speeds that are first to get 'tired' in old shutters. Sometimes they get back to almost accurate after a bit of use. The top speed will likely be a bit slow too, but then it probably never was that close to its marked speed. There were many weird and wonderful designs and fittings of plate holder. However, what you have there appears to be a fairly standard slide-in plate-holder with a GG screen somehow fixed to the back of it. It also doesn't appear to place the GG in the correct plane where a plate would normally sit. So I suspect it's been made out of an Agfa viewing/focussing screen and a standard slide-in metal plate-holder. It doesn't look as if it was originally made for that camera. The 'DGH' appears to be intentional to enable the GG screen to be easily removed. Even if the screen does give accurate focus, you'll need a separate slide-in metal plate-holder for the plates or cut film. When cut-film started to take over from glass plates, cut film sheaths were produced that you could slide a sheet of film into, and then clip the film and sheath together into the old glass plate-holders. Such sheaths turn up occasionally, along with the metal plate-holders, but you have to be patient to find them. Especially in 9*12cm size.

Absolutely no chance of getting this one upgraded then? It's a Tamron SP 90mm f/2.5 1:2 AF 'Macro' from 1990 - 33 years ago... really!? I don't think it even has any firmware to upgrade. Not a bad little lens even today though. Here it is easily resolving 150 lppmm just off-centre @ f/4.... with almost no Green/Magenta LoCa fringing to be seen! (100% crop from 240 megapixel, pixel-shifted image. Each of the res-test elements would be 0.6mm square on the sensor.)

The copy film I used was sprocketed 35mm stock. Specifically designed for making positive dupes. It came in a 25' length IIRC and was developed in print developer. There's probably nothing exactly the same on sale these days, although I'd be surprised if positive cine print stock was unavailable. It was a little wasteful, because I cut it into about 1.5 frame lengths to put in a contact frame, and to give some handling area for processing. These days if I ever needed to do it again I'd use the 'Illumitran' copier I use for digitising film.

No, the Tamron adapters don't lend themselves to drilling and tapping easily. After one painful adaption - see picture - I ignored that route and just glued my DIY metering fork to the rear of the adapter's aperture ring. No bending, drilling or tapping needed. And fitted to the lens -

That's all very well, but the normalisation and XYZ values are geared toward reproducing the mysterious horseshoe. A self-fulfilling prophesy. There are still no absolute units nor definition for colour saturation, except that which plonks it somewhere in the horseshoe. Clearly a pointless exercise if you're trying to determine the meaning of the horseshoe itself in some absolute terms. Luminosity is slightly irrelevant, except that it obviously affects the ability of the human eye to perceive and discriminate colour. It's also clear that a monochromatic Laser light must be 100% saturated, but still sits within that horseshoe? Illogical Captain!

Years ago I was asked to produce some B&W slides to be projected as a backdrop to a stage performance. I just shot the exterior scenes on FP4 and developed it normally, then made contact positive dupes onto blue sensitive slow copy film under an amber safelight in the darkroom. IMO the minimal extra work was actually easier than piddling about with an unknown reversal kit that probably wouldn't give good results without some experimenting and several tries. Plus there was more exposure latitude and contrast control with the copy film method. The play's producer was happy with the results anyway.

Experience yes, as below. Suggested camera? Mirrorless and full-frame? That's going to be expensive, even used. How much do you want to spend? I've accumulated quite a collection of 50 to 58mm lenses over the years, and recently decided to find the 'best' one to use on my Mirrorless Sony A7r4. Sadly, not many of them stood up to the test of a 60 megapixel full-frame digital sensor. A Minolta P-F 58mm f/1.4 was about the weakest performer - hardly surprising since Minolta tried to squeeze an f/1.4 maximum aperture out of only a 6 element design, when every other maker uses 7 elements. So if you want sharpness corner to corner, don't expect to get it from an old film-era lens. Expect 'characterful' and a bit (or a lot!) soft round the edges, and maybe with some colour-fringing thrown in for good measure. Here's one of the better examples: A West German Zeiss 50mm f/1.8 Planar (7 element) made for Rollei's venture into the 35mm camera market. Corner resolution shown top, and centre resolution shown below. That's at f/4. Wide open the corners are much softer and a fair bit darker due to vignetting. The Minolta P-F lens is much, much worse, despite it having quite a few online fans. They must like 'characterful' quite a lot!

Many years ago I was looking for Tamron Adaptall 2 adapters with the 'rabbit ear' metering forks. They were like hen's teeth back then, and commanded a premium price because of their rarity. My solution was to obtain a couple of bog-standard Tamron Adaptall Nikon-fit adapters and epoxy glue some thin metal home-made forks to them. They worked just fine. I had some thin gauge stainless steel sheet that I cut and hand filed to the same pattern as Nikon's metering fork, but a bit longer to allow some bonding area. However, the metering forks don't need much strength, so thin aluminium or plastic sheet would probably work just as well. I came across one of those modified adapters recently and the epoxied rabbit ears were still firmly attached. IIRC I had to scrape a bit of the shiny black anodising off the back of the aperture scale to get the home-made SS forks to stick firmly.

Then what use is it? Because colour is a human construct. It does not exist outside of our perception (obviously the electromagnetic radiation that stimulates that perception is real, but concepts like 'red', 'orange', 'purple', etc. are a human construct placed on a very small region of the EM spectrum). Therefore any objective mapping of colour must be limited to what the human eye/brain can perceive. Otherwise it's not 'colour', but only something we can detect artificially through instrumentation.

Thanks for the replies so far. My real interest is in how the perimeter (locus) of the CIE horseshoe was originally arrived at, and in what objective units it's measured or defined. It presumably defines a limit of saturation. How is that saturation defined, and in what units? The hue scale in wavelength is obvious, but again with no objective indication of how refined human differentiation of hue difference is. For example: I suspect that no-one can distinguish a difference in colour between the spectral Sodium D-lines, which are less than 1 nanometer different in wavelength. So how far apart in wavelength do two similar hues have to be before the 'average' human eye can distinguish them? It's this lack of absolute parametric definition that I find curious about the horseshoe. Because without objective units it's just a doodle made up in 1931 - before Lasers, before LEDs, before cheap diffraction gratings, before dichroic filters. Even before the perfection of the Photo-multiplier tube. Basically before any of the tools we'd expect to currently use in colorimetry were available. So does it really define the limits of human vision, or is it just a doodled illustration of it? P.S. I posted this here deliberately to avoid an obnoxious, patronising and insulting intrusion from a certain self-styled expert. Who often fails to provide clear answers.