"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."
seezee at Mercury Photo Bureau
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seezee's day-job at Messenger Web Design
Latched and framed bellows means you can use bag bellows for wide-angled lenses, sell extra bellows (especialy if the rear is the same as on the many, many Sinars around) sometime in the future. Remember your cameras will still be around in a hundred year - they are not use and throw away products.
I am sure you use all your energies on getting the camera right just now, but don't forget that many products can be good revenue earners in the accessories department. Especialy when you are keeping the first purchase price so low!
I can only see a single danger in your present project. This is the bellows. There is lot of experience here in LFPF about bellows that went wrong due to materials that just didn't stand up to use, damp, UV light or didn't exclude all light frequences that can register on the emulsion. Some of these were bought and some were homemade. But there has been complete agreement with the good performance of bellows (and materials used) from Custom Bellows ( i think that is the name?) in the UK.
If you stick (pun!) to glue, PLEASE use a water soluble glue. Contact glue is well nigh impossible to repair and remove.
I believe a 5X7 Intrepid would be great and have more buyers that an 8X10.
£500 is extremely attractive for a second lighter, less movements needed, camera. unfinished would be a good option.
notch codes ? I only use one film...
We have had a quote from custom bellows before right at the early stages of our 4x5 production but it was something like 10x the cost of doing it ourselves, they do make great bellows though. Ours from a materials point of view are quite different, we have had a lot of compliments on the bellows from our 800 shipped 4x5s and you will be glad to hear the 8x10 ones use a similar design and the same materials, the outer layer is water resistant with a double light proof layer on the inside. We have had no reports of any issues with UV but I should have a tech sheet for the fabric somewhere that I can dig out and see exactly what wave lengths is blocks.
Hi!
a simple question from a potential newbie, would any 4x5 film holder fit the Intrepid just fine or some do better then others?
thanks!
Maxim - a bit off the wall - but would you sell a set or two of the bellows alone? There are a number of us here building our own cameras (I'm a 4x5 type myself) and bellows are *always* the hard part!
Neil
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