Wood or plastic holders?

[Michael Graves]

I must be the strange one here then. I like the plastic ones better. They're easier to vacuum out. I have a Kinetronics antistatic brush that I use to dust them before vacuuming. I've got six wooden 5x7s that I'd trade for Fidelity or Lisco plastic holders any day. One of them needs to be retaped. Two of mine for one of yours.

[Stephen Willard]

Capocheny, I am keeping eye pealed on ebay. Sal my 4x10 wooden holders are Lotus at $295 a pop when I bought them a while back. Ouch, I bought six of them plus some back up dark slides. However, they are amazing holders with exacting tolerances. No regrets.

If we were going to go custom what I would really like is a 5x8 holder with the standard 5x7 opening. The holder would be an inch longer. This way when I cut my 5x7 from 8x10 I need only make one cut rather then 3 cuts. The extra inch of film would slide up into film holder and never get exposed. I then would cut the film down to 5x7 later after development in full light. This would make cutting 5x7 easier, faster, and with less handling and reduce dust problems.

[Donald Brewster]

I wish Fidelity still made plastic holders for 11x14. Hard to find used holders in that size and the new wood ones are really expensive.

[Brian Ellis]

"I saw a passing reference recently that wooden holders hold film flatter."

I doubt that any generalization like that would be accurate, so much depends on the particular holder. But I do remember one of the photography magazines publishing the results of a film flatness test some years ago and the winner was an old Graflex wooden holder.

[Don Bryant]

Not too many good wood holders are left. I have heard that the added benefit of wood is that they're less likely to generate static electricity and attract dust...

I got a couple for my deardorff but haven't had the time to test them yet. But as far as looks go, wooden holders sure look better on a dorf than plastic ones

Try some S&S holders, I think you will find the quality to be excellent, and probably better than most older used ones.