Suggestions for lightweight 8x10

[Bruce Barlow]

"Alice," my Richard Ritter 8x10 (named after one of his cats), weighs a little over 6 pounds, handles like a dream, and makes many more good photographs-per-100 negatives than my Sinar Norma, at half the weight. It's the cat hair inside the bellows from Alice: she slept on them while Richard assembled the carbon fiber and aircraft aluminum bed, cherry back, and front. Cat hair magic.

I wrote a "first impressions" article for View Camera magazine, which you can download from the "Free Downloads" page on my web site, www'circleofthesunproductions.com. Richard's video, "The Richard Ritter Ultra Large Format Camera Owner's Manual" for a measly $15 (including postage to anywhere including Mongolia) is also an excellent introduction to Richard's innovative design, which he uses on his ULFs and his 8x10s.

BTW, I have no financial interest in Richard's camera business. We split profits on the videos, which ain't much. We enjoy teaching workshops together. He is an excellent friend, a true treasure to the LF community, a major innovator in LF tools and cameras. and we enjoy going to breakfast together at the Dam Diner. Pretty good, I'd say.

[MIke Sherck]

Wehman. 8 1/2 lbs, superb quality, solid in use.

Mike

[Jim Rhoades]

Bruce, by any chance are you going to be with Richard at Peter's Valley?

[Michael Nagl]

Wehman. 8 1/2 lbs, superb quality, solid in use.

Mike

Must be joking.
I had one, but not for long. Carelessly built. Impossible to get standards aywhere near parallel. Poorly designed, too. Beware unless you don´t like precision at all.

[MIke Sherck]

Must be joking.
I had one, but not for long. Carelessly built. Impossible to get standards aywhere near parallel. Poorly designed, too. Beware unless you don´t like precision at all.

Really? Mine was wonderful -- solidly built, easy to use and I had no problems with parallelism in any axis. Mine was a 2001 model -- I sold it last spring and am on the list for a new one this year. Can't wait!

Mike

[Michael Nagl]

Yes really. Maybe mine was the special model for overseas shipping.

[Jrewt]

I like my wehman, which is a 2004 or 05 standard model. My standards open up pretty square, but I don't see how that matters exactly. The view camera affords me movements, and I always use them. Do many people actually need an 8x10 to open up perfectly parallel, and then not use any tilt/swing/rise?

[Michael Nagl]

Well I do. I level the base of the tripod, put the Linhof on it and I know the back is the way I always want it: Strictly upright. When I took pictures of buildings with the W. (mine was a 2007 lightweight model) I didn´t get parallel lines in two out of three pictures, which was due to the ridiculous detents, and to the fact that the film plane had about one centimeter of play when locked down. This may be of no consequence when you are out in the wilderness or doing portraits, but it made the camera unusable for my purposes.

[Bruce Barlow]

Bruce, by any chance are you going to be with Richard at Peter's Valley?

Dunno. Haven't thought about it. If lots of you sign up, maybe he'll need me as a gopher. Enrollment is the issue: if it's light, it's Richard's show (ans he did it well by all accounts last year). If it's a stampede, we, who knows? Peters Valley sounds like a great facility that allows us to do things we wouldn't otherwise do (such as stuff in the dark).

So sign up, you new east coast LF-ers!

[Kirk Fry]

5 lb 8x10 back “Lite” $ 1,550.00

http://www.petergowland.com/camera/

The lightest of the light. That is even lighter than my Crown.

K