shadowleaves

<p>Hi Bob, I think the tempatures for my developer/stop/fixer remained the same in both cases (all at room temperature). The only difference was the washing water. I used a Jobo washer which basically is a tube connecting to the tap on its one end and inserts into a Jobo 1520 drum on its other end. In the first case (first pic), I didn't care for the temperature of wash water, and i think it was likely above 90 deg F. What's even worse was that after the wash I immersed the film strip into cold water. In the second case, I used a thermometer to make sure the tap water was at roughly the same temperature of my developer/stop/fixer (around 70 F).</p>

<p>Ok I've done it again with the same batch of film, the same solutions and carefully controlled washing temperature. Reticulation is gone this time....<br>

Thank you all for your help!</p>

<p><img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4595121/after.jpg" alt="" width="808" height="687" /></p>

<p>Hmmm, looks like someone had exactly the same problem a few months ago with the same film......perhaps Neopan 400 is indeed sensitive to reticulation caused by temperature shifting?<br>

<a href="http://www.apug.org/forums/forum37/76841-reticulation-neopan-400-a.html">http://www.apug.org/forums/forum37/76841-reticulation-neopan-400-a.html</a></p>

 

<p>Thank you Franklin, but I was using Legacy 400 (Fuji Neopan 400) which I think is a pretty modern film...<br>

As for temperature, I'm pretty sure the temperature of developer/stopper/fixer were all within 5 deg difference, but maybe the washing is a bit too high. Anyway I will try it again and thank you for your help!</p>

<p>Hi guys,<br>

I've been trying this combo a while, but the two rolls that I developed both had this weird pattern when scanned at high resolution or viewed with a high-mag loupe. I thought it was my Rodinal, but I always use freshly diluted solution, and I used the same original stock solution a month ago with Arista.EDU Ultra 400 (Fomapan 400) and had no problem whatsoever. I've been told that Rodinal stores very well. Has anyone seen this before? Is it more likely a film issue, developer issue, or fixer issue? I didn't have chance to change my fixer though...<br>

Thank you for your attention.<br>

Han<br>

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4595121/crop.jpg" alt="" /></p>

 

<p>did any one ever perform a side-by-side test of ZM 50/2 and Summicron-M 50/2, shooting the same scene at the same time on Provia or something similar? that could be really interesting to see...</p>

<p>Jamie, I think your problem might be related to the fact that you're shooting a nightscape pic. In the night any cameras, especially view cameras, will be more prone to flare from lights.</p>

<p>Christos, I see you have shot wonderful pics with the Shen Hao 617! Thanks for sharing your results. You mentioned earlier in this thread that Shen Hao 617 is a bad copy of Ebony 617S and its aluminum alloy is "very soft". Have you actually handled the Ebony 617S and compared these two cameras? What do you think of the rigidity of Shen Hao TFC617A? If the aluminum is soft I guess rigidity will be affected especially at long extension (say, using a 300mm lens). You seem not happy with Shen Hao TFC-617A's quality, but your pics from that camera are in fact wonderful!</p>

<p>Thank you Bob. I'll get a 5x7 and cut it. I previously cut a Mamiya RB67 screen to fit my Rollei 2.8F so I guess the work to cut a 6x17 fresnel out of 5x7 is not too much harder...</p>

<p>Hi, I wonder if anyone knows where I can order a 6x17 Fresnel screen for shen-hao TFC-617A camera, other than cutting those cheap fresnel magnifying sheets out of grocery store? I tried googling quite a bit but seems that 6x17 fresnels are very hard to find. Thanks a lot!</p>

<p>The best option is to purchase a Sinar 4x5 fresnel (around $60 on ebay), which has a clear (no fresnel) center spot. Since the clear center spot will not affect the light path in any way, this fresnel can be placed between the lens and ground glass without jeopardizing the focus accuracy.</p>

I have used Mamiya 7 as well; their lense are absolutely the king of resolution among all medium format lense. Mamiya 7's 50mm, 80mm and 150mm I owned easily blow Hasselblad's latest 50 CFI, 80 CFE and 150 CFI away. However Mamiya has one big problem: color rendition. I never like the color of slides out of my Mamiya 7. They're shifted towards green/blue way too much compared to Zeiss, Rodenstock and Fujinon lense. Even Schneider lense (which are considered cool among German lense) are warmer than Mamiya's. I finally sold my Mamiya 7 kit precisely for that. I do miss the sharpness of Mamiya lense a lot, though.

Either Alpa or Fotoman has only scale focusing, and thus I'm assuming you're comfortable with it rather than rangefinder-coupled focusing. Otherwise forget both of them.

 

I have handled a Fotoman 612 for a short period of time and the build quality really impressed me. I don't think Alpa's claimed "high-precision" will make any practical difference compared with the upcoming Fotoman 6x9, especially considering the inherent error with scale focusing. Plus, Alpa's price-tags for its lense are simply ridiculous, IMHO. With the price of an Alpa lens you could get yourself an entire package of Fotoman 6x9 with Horseman 6x9 back, 3 lense and I'll bet $100 that no one can tell the images apart taken by the two cameras, given that they're fitted with the same model of lense.

 

The only disadvantage of Fotoman is its viewfinder. The mask is placed in the middle of the optics, leading to huge error in framing if your eye is a little bit away from the center of the eyepiece. Solution is easy: get a Cosina-Voigtlander or Zeiss Ikon bright-line viewfinder for their 35mm cameras. 6x9 has the same aspect ratio as 35mm so you just need some easy calculation to figure out which viewfinder you should get.

Thank you John! Do you get light fall-off with 65mm lens, at f/4.5 and f/22 respectively? If there's at least some fall-off, and if the transition of the fall-off from the center towards the edge is smooth, I think I'll like it.

I plan to acquire a Horseman SW612 in the near future and I'm debating between getting a 55mm kit or 65mm kit.

Price-wise it seems that the SW612+Grandagon-N 65mm outfit is a few hundred bucks more than the one with 55mm

Apo-Grandagon (which puzzles me as I thought the Apo one would be more expensive). However even on horseman's

56x112mm frame size, the 55mm seems extremely wide at 18mm horizontally corresponding to 35mm format. 65mm on 612

is around 21mm horizontally at 35mm format. I also found that despite the "Apo" marking, the optical performance

of 55mm is lesser compared to 65mm. I'm upgrading from my Xpan to 612 format and I'm hoping getting more details

in the larger slide of 612. 55mm seems to me too close to the Xpan 45mm and I'm afraid that it won't bring me

much more details other than an extreme perspective.

 

Anyone with experience on the similar choice? Which lens suits better for the 6x12 format do you think?

 

Another question is about light fall-off, but perhaps my point is different from most other people: I love the

light fall-off of Xpan 45mm so much that I hope to get similar results from 612. Pics I've seen from 90mm lense

on 617 do have a beautiful, natural fall-off across the image. Now, I've heard that 65mm is such a "good" lens

that the fall-off almost disappear when closing down a bit. That bothers me a lot. If I went with 55mm, will I

get more light-off similar to the 90mm on 617?

 

I appreciate any inputs from you. Thanks a lot!

ps: watch carefully how the trigger mechanism works before you start to modify it.

Xinyang, that is because your slide mount is not thick enough to trigger the gate. You can simply open the projector and slightly bend the trigger(which stops the 2 doors if slide mount is not thick enough) towards the bottom.