rodeo_joe1

I've just tried Topaz De-noise AI, and am impressed. The detail retention is far better than what's possible with the chroma and luma noise-reduction sliders in ACR (and ACR exceeds a SOOC Jpeg by quite a way). The only quibble I have is with Topaz's rendering of reflective highlights. These sometimes have the appearance of being 'drawn on' and a bit artificial. But overall an impressive piece of software. There's always going to be an increase in blue channel noise when the subject is lit with a low Kelvin light source. The blue channel has to be boosted to bring the CT back in line with daylight, for which the sensor is designed. And vignetting effectively further underexposes the corners of the image. I'm wondering if the effect you're seeing is down to micro-lens array geometry making lens vignetting worse? It seems to me that no-one has compared the degree of vignetting with the same lens(es) across different sensors/camera models. Not counting DX versus FX sensors of course.

I think the words 'of its time' need emphasis there. As well as a questioning of 'best'. Best suited to taking a professional battering maybe, but delivering superior image-quality? Questionable. Speaking for myself, before I got a mirrorless body I would reach for the much neater and lighter D7200 over the hugely more bulky D800 as an everyday user camera. Then there's the question of condition. A lightly used, amateur-owned D750 versus a well used, pro-owned D4 at about the same money? A total no-brainer. D750 please!

What's that whirring noise? Oh, it's just Ansel Adams spinning in his grave at the thought of monobaths, and the fact that they allow no control over development time and hence negative contrast. If - big IF - monobaths gave the same quality of results, the same economy of use and the same archival permanence as separate developer and fixer, then don't you think they'd be the norm by now?

There are loads of DIY options if low cost is important. A cork note-board laid flat and using thumb-tacks to hold the paper is just one thought that springs to mind. No need to pay through the nose because a product has the epithet "photographic" attached to it. Same as surveyor's tripods costing a fraction of the ludicrous prices asked for photographic tripods. We're just being ripped off guys!

Back then was back then! This is 2023. The best advice to give a beginner today is "Don't start out with film." Film teaches you nothing about lighting, exposure, composition, anticipation, empathy with the subject, and all the other stuff that's important to getting a good picture. Stuff that you can learn 10 times faster with a digital camera - at least a digital camera with manual exposure mode. Film diverts attention (and enthusiasm) away from aesthetics and what's really important in making pictures, and down a pointless rabbit hole of loading cameras, groping around in the dark, slopping chemicals about, reading thermometers, etc., etc. All obsolete cr*p that nobody needs to know any longer. Stuff that does not make anyone a better photographer for knowing. A hard truth to take if, like me, you spent years going through that tedious apprenticeship when film was all that was available. And I'm pretty sure the Dagguerrotypists and wet-plate workers felt the same when ready-made dry plates and film came along. It's called progress. Suck it up!

That appears to be a standard sprung back for a double-darkslide (DDS). The film holder is pushed underneath the sprung ground-glass screen after focussing and composing. Next size down from 9x12cm would be quarter-plate - 3.25"x4.25" (~83x108mm) - and from that, 65mm x 90mm. You need to measure the width between the guide rails either side of the screen section to find out for sure. A DDS is about 1cm wider than the film it's designed to take. So the width difference should be obvious; at just over 90mm for quarter-plate, and around 75mm for 6.5 x 9cm film. Neither of those film sizes are easy to find these days and you're probably looking at a cost of £50 or €50 minimum order for film + the cost of a darkslide if you don't already have one. Does the camera have a lens fitted? Is the lens in good condition, and does the shutter work? If the answer to any of those is 'no', then it's going to be an expensive and tedious business making the camera workable.

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 -