RE: 4x5 Sheet Film

I would recommend using half-tone or lith film. It is quite inexpensive and
will offer you the ability to enlarge your print at some point in the future if
you wish. BTW, if you decide to go with Polaroid film then a used 545 holder
shouldn't cost more than about $60 on eBay.

Development of the lith film can be most easily be done with tubes in your
bathroom. You can either purchase BTZS tubes or just cut your own from PVC
tubing (with the negative that all processing needs to be done in the dark, but
if you're on a budget then that's no big deal).

I would "highly" recommend that you do your own processing, as hauling things
to a custom printer gets rather expensive. A darkroom really isn't needed,
just a bathroom or some place where you have a little elbow room that you can
make completely dark. Actually, you don't even need that if you go with BTZS
tubes, you would just need a changing bag where you could initially load the
tubes then do everything else with the lights on.

As far as printing is concerned, if you are going to be doing contact printing
then you don't need a darkroom. You can consider using an older process, such
as Van Dyke (http://tinyurl.com/a8qyw). This can give real interest to your
image and open up a whole realm of possibilities.

Bottom line is that the more you do yourself, the better the results will be
(perhaps not at first, but eventually). Nobody in the world cares about your
images more than you, so only you will be willing to spend the time to make
them just right.

Cheers -

george

--- Doug Holt <holt.design@verizon.net> wrote:

> Brian,
>
> Thanks for your input. Built it custom all on info I've picked up here and
> there. Basically it's a 4x5 finger-jointed mahogany box (think 1890-1900's
> wooden telephones and wooden salt boxes) with a zero-image shutter cable
> assembly. I've sized it to fit a standard 4x5 flat sheet holder -
> specifically
> the fidelity two-sided models.
>
> Am thinking B&W paper might be the way to go though. Any thoughts on paper
> vs.
> film? The darkroom self-processing is a desired thing.
>
> Thanks,
> Doug
>
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Brian Reynolds
> >Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 4:06 PM
> >To: pinhole-discussion@spitbite.org
> >Subject: Re: [pinhole-discussion] 4x5 Sheet Film0
> >
> >Which kit?
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Received on Fri Dec 16 05:13:08 2005