That is a very good use of forceps, I have some somewhere, as well as surgical scissors that almost look the same, never thought to use them but I'm now thinking. I bought eight pair of Kaiser film drying clips in Germany about 32-33 years ago, they have been in constant use since and are wonderful....
Interesting point you make about weight there Maris. The Toyo 45AX in standard trim weighs about 2.7 kg, my Shen Hao 4x5 wooden field folder weighs 2.4kg, your Tachihara 4x5 is around 1.6kg. Recently I saw a Toyo 45AX fitted with a Toyo 4x5 revolving back, something I didn’t know could be done. A re...
Because aberrations in enlarging lenses are minimised for short object distances, a good enlarger lens can be used on a view camera as a high quality close-up or macro lens – providing that a means for controlling the exposure time is available. View Camera Technique, by Leslie Stroebel, 7th edition...
Macro work on a 4x5” camera depends a bit on the bellows extension you have available. For this reason many monorail 4x5 cameras have the capacity to add an extension set of bellows, usually just another set of standard bellows. You will probably have around 600mm to 700mm of reliable extension poss...
Maris, 45ºC is quite warm, I don’t think I have ever developed panchromatic film that warm, around 30-33ºC is the warmest, that too was in Qld, but up Cape York, I hung the film from trees to dry. I have no idea what it was other than it was 135 Kodak film, but that was in another life. B&W Lith...
I reckon the 20 Celcius tradition as a developer temperature has no deep technical basis. It was just a convenient value based on historically average European tap water. Accurate temperature control is very difficult but accurate time control is very easy. That's why I just measure the temp and ad...