rodeo_joe1

That it's about 55 years old and now needs repair? Sorry, but this old stuff doesn't go on working forever without some intervention. My guess would be that the shutter end-of-travel sensor hasn't tripped, but it could be any one of several other faults. There's probably no easy DIY fix. So two options - send it back or pay for a repair.

Maybe something that entirely evaporates would be just as effective? Lighter fluid, or ethanol perhaps? I'm pretty sure just loosening the dirt, grease or whatever gunk around the plunger/button/lever would be sufficient to get things moving again.

There must be a small ground-glass or diffuse surface in the periscope, because the eye can't easily see an aerial image. Also a tiny 1 cm square area is useless as a viewfinder. Looks like a prototype, 'proof of concept' job. Neatly made though, especially the body space to accomodate the sideways swinging periscope. It might be worth searching early 1920s patents for a similar design concept to track down a potential maker. IMO it's well worth doing the research, because it might be an early Barnack experiment or something equally rare and important. The rigid telescoping lens box looks distinctly Leica-esqe. What's the provenance of the thing? Where did it come from and who previously owned it? If you can trace its history, you may well track down the maker.

I think maybe we ought to stop poking the wasp's nest, because it's only getting worse! Now there are duplicated fora for medium and large format?? What next? A Holga pinhole gum-bichromate forum.... Oh sh*t, I shouldn't even have thought that too loud. 🤐

Well, if it ever was Tri-X, it certainly doesn't act like it now! Your 400 EI frame shows only a faint density in the window area, which I would expect to be almost fully black. Shoot another short length of test exposures around the 25 to 100 ISO range and develop for 8 mins. Because that's where the speed of the film seems to be now.... unless your metering was way off. If you have a handheld meter, use it in incident mode; pointing the dome from the subject back toward the camera. It's the most reliable method.

IIRC - it's a long time since I changed the lamp in the C7700 - the bi-pin connector is loose on two wires, and only the front part of the reflector is clipped into the lamphouse. So there's a little bit of tolerance over the length of the bulb. The diameter of the reflector is important though, and I think the diameter of the proper enlarger bulb is smaller than that of a domestic kitchen/bathroom overhead lamp. I might well be mis-remembering that, but the boxes that my spare bulbs came in were quite tiny. About a 40mm cube I think. Anyhow. That Amazon lamp has two chances of fitting - it'll fit or it won't!

RAW files are colour space agnostic, meaning that they can be rendered as sRGB or AdobeRGB, or any of a dozen other obscure colour spaces that have been dreamt up. The limitation to a choice of sRGB or AdobeRGB only applies to 8bit JPEGs, where the colour gamut gets 'baked in'. Shooting RAW future-proofs your pictures and allows a free choice of colour spaces at any time, rather than pre-selecting from a narrow choice. It also saves the images at a higher bit-depth, allowing a wider dynamic range to be captured and retrieved. In view of the low cost of high-capacity memory cards, I see no reason not to shoot RAW or RAW+JPEG by default. Because most modern cameras have a 14 bit analogue-to-digital converter, and throwing 6 bits of tonal information away by only storing JPEGs seems like a pointless waste. RAW renders the choice of colour space in the camera menu (as well as the White-Balance) largely irrelevant, unless you only ever use the JPEG file. WRT the difference between sRGB and AdobeRGB: Adobe RGB has a different, 'wider' positioning of its Green primary within the CIE 'horseshoe'. The Red and Blue primaries are the same as sRGB. The wider green primary of AdobeRGB allows more overlap between CMYK (printing) colour gamuts and the display gamut. The Adobe green primary will be out of gamut on a legacy sRGB display, but many high-end monitors can now display the AdobeRGB colour-space quite adequately. There's also a difference in the tone curve applied, with Adobe RGB adopting a pure log 1/2.2 curve, while sRGB has a partially linear shadow region, followed by a log 1/2.4 curve - for purely theoretical and mathematical reasons - there's almost no practical difference in their tonal appearance. RAW, on the other hand, stays linear and can have any tonal curve you like applied to it. Within the bounds of its 14 bit precision of course. In short, if you shoot RAW the choice between sRGB and AdobeRGB in camera isn't at all important.

Ah gee Jim! That might actually get the 'bladenhoff fixed. What`re you going to post next January?

What, even on the Canon, Pentax and Olympus fora? I can see that being a bit controversial. 🥸

You've got a lever wind?! Lucky devil. Mine's knob-wound... and with a lefthand thread I suspect.

I just stuck a cheap water-quality meter in my known-to-be-hard tap water. It read 345 ppm after running the tap for a minute or so. However, the last few B&W films I've developed in it have been OK, with no lime scum marks showing up after drying. No strange opalescence to any processing chemicals either. If I was developing a lot of film or doing it commercially, then I wouldn't be too happy with that level of dissolved solids.... but I ain't!

Yes. I'm afraid that looks more than 'a bit' fogged, but it's only to be expected with old film that's probably not been refrigerated all its life. The fog shouldn't hurt too much. It's not ideal, but scanning and a bit of image manipulation can cover up a multitude of sins these days. P.S. The Dmax looks not too bad. So maybe 7.5 to 8 mins development will get you there after adjusting the EI on a more 'average' scene. I suspect that the 32 ISO of early Panatomic-X might be closer to a realistic speed though.

Hmmm. A quick Google search showed that cheap 12v 'transformers' stop at about 60 Watts, and above that the price shoots up. This is the cheapest one I could find that'll drive a 100 watt bulb safely. There was another rated at 105w, but it hardly saves enough money for being so marginally rated. I don't see why a LED bi-pin of about 15 watt rating wouldn't work, but those LED bulbs don't have a parabolic focussing reflector. They use a lens array in front of the LED chips - which may or may not put as much light into the condenser/diffuser-box as a halogen bulb. Then again, modern photo paper is a bit faster than it used to be. So a 50 watt equivalent LED might be more than adequate these days. FWIW, this is as far as I've got trying to shoehorn a high power LED module into my L1000 - The heatsink is an old computer CPU cooler from the early Pentium era. There's a little 12v fan screwed underneath the bit you can see. I think I might have to fabricate a 'power bulge' to the lamphouse to make it fit!😱

Let me explain my dismissal of fashion and celebrity photography: In my older years, I've come to appreciate the historical value of photography much more. In, say 100 years time, hardly anyone will care about or remember who Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, 'Twiggy', David Beckham or the Kardashian family were. Let alone what daft styles of clothing were on offer to a privileged few people. IMO the world just doesn't need yet another staged portrait of Donald Trump, Madonna or Beyonce - no matter how well-lit, composed or 'revealing' it might be. How much does anyone care about Marie Lloyd, Caruso or even John Wayne these days? Or look on their portraits as of major importance in the great scheme of things? A major part of history, I believe, should be about showing us what we've lost and what we've (possibly) gained, and photography has an important role to play in that. The pictures of working tall-ships and everyday life in and around Whitby Harbour, taken by Frank Meadow Sutcliffe about a century ago, are more poignant to me than anything shot by David Hamilton or Richard Avedon. As are more recent pictures of now lost coal mining communities taken by the likes of Bill Brandt. Fame and celebrity are as transient and fickle as fashion. They have no long term importance. Although I would love to see candid photographs of the likes of Alexander the Great, Confucius, Buddha, Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. FWIW, I think the only pictures of any longterm importance taken by David Bailey are those of the Kray twins - and he only took those at their unrefusable 'invitation'. Whereas, perhaps less famous, Don McCullin, IMO, has a far more historically important body of work, both war-related and away from the battlefield.

The "does well with video" clause is what's making me hesitant to make a camera suggestion, because video can knock things into an entirely different ball park. To me, "good video" means at minimum a nice steady shot and decent sound quality - requiring at least an external mic or two, good image stabilisation, or use of a tripod or gyro-gimbal. Those items alone could bust a $1000 budget. Even for basic Vlogging. Because distorted and noisy sound, together with motion-sickness inducing camera waving, will nullify even an 8K picture quality. (I couldn't watch the TV series 'NYPD blue' because of its choice of a wobbly handheld camera verite shooting style. And doubtless the cameras used on that series weren't at all cheap.) For example: Two cheaper cameras on tripods with a 'wild' sound recording setup can allow for close-up or zoomed cutaway edits, which will give a much more professional and polished look than one expensive handheld camera using its inbuilt mics and with non-edited real time zooming and subsequent focus-hunting. 'Wild' sound presenting no synch issues, given the precision of modern digital timing. The actual image quality is secondary to the overall audio-visual experience IMO. And since nearly all digital cameras can produce acceptable video image quality these days, it's down to the ancillaries like external mics, tripods and smooth zooming/focussing lenses to make the real difference. But again, it depends on the use-case as to what minimum budget is needed.

Oooh, not a good subject to get a decent EI guide from. The large area of netted window light is going to throw any metering right off. I presume the first, top picture is the one at EI 50? It looks about right for shadow detail, but considering the scene, the contrast is a bit low. So maybe up the development time to 8 or 9 minutes? 9 minutes is a fairly standard time for D-76 @ 1:1 IIRC.

Much better! Could still do with a bit more saturation IMO, but that's an easy fix.

Not easy. I looked at adapting a LED module to my Durst L1000 5x4 enlarger. It takes a 24V 250 watt(!) dichroic reflector bulb. Apart from costing a small fortune to replace, that bugger puts out a lot of heat and needs a vibration-inducing fan to cool it. So a LED would be a far better option. I figured a 50 watt LED module would put out about the same amount of light.... but (1) a 50 watt LED chip needs a sizeable heatsink and, albeit smaller, fan. (2) The heatsink and fan won't fit in the same space as the dichroic bulb. (3) The LED module needs 36 volts DC to drive it. (4) The LED module doesn't have a focused light beam like the dichroic bulb. The PSU is a trivial issue, but the overall bulk of the LED module + heatsink + fan - which all have to be thermally coupled - is the real stumbling block. Glen said - "Should look like this:" I know, I have the LPL C7700 that takes an identical bulb.

What bulb does it have at the moment? Because the easiest route is to use the same bulb holder and get a power supply to suit. I take it you're in the UK if you're talking about 240 volt mains? In which case the enlarger probably uses a 12v bi-pin dichroic reflector halogen bulb, and it's not going to be easy to fit a powerful enough LED into the same space. A 100w equivalent domestic LED bulb would be perfectly OK as far as light output is concerned. There just might not be enough room in the lamp-house for it.

Nah. It's one of those cigarette rolling machines and he's rolling up his next spliff.

Agreed. Any sort of prefix is going to add an exclusion to the type of Nikon gear expected to be discussed. Like Nikon speedlights, bellows, lenses, motor drives, remotes, finder-illuminators and all the other bits and pieces that Nikon have produced for their camera systems over the years.

Wow! A 3rd generation photographer. Respect, Glen!

It depends what sort. The cartridge-in-a-jug type filters are mainly charcoal to remove the chlorination taste/smell, although they might have some ion-exchange resin pellets in there as well. A proper in-line ion-exchange purifier is very expensive to fit and run. I used to fit my darkroom tap with a reverse-flushable fine particulate filter. Just to stop visible crud from speckling the film. It had no effect on dissolved minerals, but then the water supply in that area was very soft. I've since moved to a hard water area, but I don't develop much film these days, so it doesn't bother me too much. FWIW, some commercial developer formulations contain sodium hexametaphosphate (Calgon) or a similar sequestering agent. So adding a bit of Calgon to the water used for making up processing chemicals and the final wash water shouldn't hurt. But I'd still use an additional particulate filter to stop random crud settling on the film. Mine consisted of a small cloth 'cartridge' enclosed in a plastic cylinder that fitted straight on the tap via a rubber adapter. I think the make was "Micronyl" IIRC.

What idiot thought a bulb requiring 82 volts was a good idea!?

A pretty good guide to the state of the capacitor(s) is to see how long the flash takes after switch on, with fresh batteries or plugged in, before the ready light comes on. And how long it stays lit after the unit is switched off. (Newer units only show the ready light while powered on, so this test might not be viable.) Anyway, a good capacitor will keep its charge, and hence the ready light lit, for a couple of minutes or more after the power is turned off. OTOH it'll flicker and extinguish after only a few seconds if the capacitor is bad or needs re-forming.