Whole Plate View Camera website ;)

[ditkoofseppala]

Very nice indeed, Clay! You are to be congratulated for doing this. What a grand idea!

Anybody have any cool information to put on it, let me know. My thought was just a static repository of whole plate specific information.

So then I take it you welcome contributions from the rest of us on WP topics? And it looks as though, in theory at least, you are prepared to let it grow into a real web resource for whole plate aficionados? With a library of articles on various subjects such as film holders, available film and how to get it, contact printing, historic WP lenses, etc. etc.?

My hat's off to you for your creative initiative!

[clay harmon]

Well, yes, that is the idea. Particularly resources, workarounds and kludges. I am beginning to warm to the idea of these semi-static sites where there is a little more deliberation involved in writing the information to be dispersed. The bulletin board model seems to encourage overly brief replies (of which I am certainly guilty) and the occasional flame-war. With this format, if someone violently objects to an article, they just have to go directly to the source instead of making snarky comments just after the objectionable post.

And yes, I would love contributions from others for this site. (with attribution, of course) As you can tell from the dates on the existing posts, it is a lot of work to come up with new material every week or so when you have a bunch of other irons in the fire.

[Rob_5419]

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YEah, it is mine. I have been busy with just about two million other things, thus the lag in postings. Anybody have any cool information to put on it, let me know. My thought was just a static repository of whole plate specific information. You've shamed me now, I guess I will have to add an entry to it.

Hi Clay,

It'd be great to see an info-web project like this take off on the net. Without the coding skills that you have, the best I could use for the bookform plate holder pages I made was an automated journal site, which isn't really ideal for this kind of resource. Seems like an overwhelming majority of respondents like the style of your website - congrats

There are a lot of British historical links on wholeplate:

http://www.ted.photographer.org.uk/camera_designs_1.htm
http://www.gtj.org.uk/en/item1/25962
http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/r...g=2&imagepos=9
http://www.makingthemodernworld.org....0-1880/IC.037/

Maybe separate sections - like building/restoring whole plate cameras; resources for whole plate materials (film); lenses; imaging etc.

Bulletin boards are great for sharing ideas and picking others' brains - more conversational.

By and large you'll be pleased to know that whole plate format photographers don't tend to be like them lot of whinging flamers

[ditkoofseppala]

By and large you'll be pleased to know that whole plate format photographers don't tend to be like them lot of whinging flamers

Music to my ears, Rob. Life is too short for flame wars.

I've solved my own film holder problem for WP, by the by, at a certain cost. (I hope it wasn't you bidding against me ) I managed to get my hands on 5 Kodak Professional DDS cutfilm holders for WP on eBay, though they didn't come cheap. They were in Australia and I wound up forking out AUD610 + 35 s&i, that's around $550 U.S. or CAD587. Maybe I could have had holders somewhat cheaper . . . eventually . . . from Fotoman, but I'm inclined to think he has given rather too keen an initial price indication that he'll probably have to renege on when they go to market anyway. And I kept thinking of the Lotus holders at $450 a pop, which made the Kodaks look like quite a bargain. They look to be in excellent shape at least. My Century still hasn't made it through the post, though I'm looking for it any day now. Not that I can get to use it until after my move; what frustration!

I look forward to contributing to Clay's site. Knowledge bases/management/sharing are a big thing for me. Something like our wee WP movement stands a much better chance of thriving if it's supported by a clear and detailed "one-stop" knowledge base capable of answering all the questions that an enquiring newbie might have.

BTW as to the coding thing, my own experience has been that the fewer bells and whistles, the better. For all the Flash, Javascript, PHP, XML etc. doodah, good old plain vanilla HTML still loads fastest and displays best in *everybody's* browser and OS. I run a BIG informational website for Seppala sleddogs using just HTML and a bit of elementary CSS. The simpler you keep it, the less trouble people with old or oddball OS/browser combinations will have with it. This forum BB causes me great frustration because I'm currently using an 'old' Macintosh G3 300MHz PowerPC tower, with IE5.5 for Mac. This board's pages take a LONG time to load on my system, just because the BB is needlessly inefficient for the simple text-display job that it does. (I use the freeware PHPBB app for forums on my own website, which seems to be a lot faster and does just as much as this forum's vBulletin does.)

[clay harmon]

For what it is worth re the website design: Don't mistake me for any sort of web genius.

All I did was download the existing Wordpress 2.1 software, made sure I had a MySQL database on my webhost, and did the virtually brainless install on my site. I then picked a theme to use. I picked this theme specifically because I like the look, and then I modified a few of the jpegs in photoshop for some site-specific appearance things. Wordpress is a free blogger/content management software that has gazillions of so-called 'themes'. It is ingenious in that I can log in right now, pick up another 'theme' in the admin panel, press apply, and the look of the website will change completely.

There are some photo-blogging themes that can be used with the wordpress system as well, and that might be a great way for someone who is not web savvy to get a lot of work uploaded relatively quickly. And again, you can change the look of the site literally with the press of a button.

Check out:

http://www.wordpress.org

and

http://themes.wordpress.net

[Howard Tanger]

Hi Sal: Perhaps I am the third person that you mention in your post. I ordered an Ebony Wholeplate on 09 August from Badger Graphic Sales. Now comes the wait, 2 to 3 months I understand. Next item(s) will be film holders. This camera will continue my learning experience in large format. I've exposed a few sheets of 4x5 and 5x7 but I still consider myself a newbie with large format. Howard Tanger

[Rob_5419]

Hi Howard,

welcome to the forum! It'd be great to hear how you get on with the whole-plate format and the Ebony. It's lovely to hear you're starting large format photography with whole plate - no messing around with anything else

All I did was download the existing Wordpress 2.1 software, made sure I had a MySQL database on my webhost, and did the virtually brainless install on my site. I then picked a theme to use. I picked this theme specifically because I like the look, and then I modified a few of the jpegs in photoshop for some site-specific appearance things. Wordpress is a free blogger/content management software that has gazillions of so-called 'themes'. It is ingenious in that I can log in right now, pick up another 'theme' in the admin panel, press apply, and the look of the website will change completely.

Clay - that's completely gone over my head. Does it give you some idea of how little I like digital technology. Nevermind, must try and learn...

DKS - that's quite expensive! I didn't drive up the price of the antipodean DDS's by bidding against you either. In England, used whole-plate holders sell for around £20 each. I don't mind paying the price that Fotoman want, partly because I'd like to see them succeed for their vision. Besides - I'm more than happy with the beautiful mahogany bookform whole plate holders which are from another world.

I had some whole plate DDS's and the darkslides were cracked. These are large versions of the 5x4" Fidelity slides made by Kodak Great Britain (I think that's what it was called). The larger whole plate darkslides are no thicker than the 5x4" but with a larger surface area, they are more prone to damage. Compared to the bookform holders, the whole plate DDS's I had were either chipped/cracked, or had the frummelly twiddly wire frommitz-thing missing.

Crikey. Are you going to be able to carry all of that on a whole plate shooting trip, or are you going to get a Julia Margaret Cameron wagon to go with it?

Ahhh - I almost forget. You have Ditkoofseppala and a sled to carry everything. I just need an electric golf caddy...

[Sal Santamaura]

Hi Sal: Perhaps I am the third person that you mention in your post...

No Howard, Jeff doesn't report orders to me. That means you're a confirmed third and there's a fourth about to be ordered by someone else.

Glad to see another 6.5x8.5 user to bolster Ilford's sales during next year's special order period. Buy lots!

[audioexcels]

Well, yes, that is the idea. Particularly resources, workarounds and kludges. I am beginning to warm to the idea of these semi-static sites where there is a little more deliberation involved in writing the information to be dispersed. The bulletin board model seems to encourage overly brief replies (of which I am certainly guilty) and the occasional flame-war. With this format, if someone violently objects to an article, they just have to go directly to the source instead of making snarky comments just after the objectionable post.

And yes, I would love contributions from others for this site. (with attribution, of course) As you can tell from the dates on the existing posts, it is a lot of work to come up with new material every week or so when you have a bunch of other irons in the fire.

So what do you use for those beautiful panoramic shots???

Wonderful site, btw...very nicely layed out, and sophisticated. Now I think it's time to get a little gallery of WP shots in there

[Diane Maher]

Glad to see another 6.5x8.5 user to bolster Ilford's sales during next year's special order period. Buy lots!

I bought lots of wp film this past year.