Hello all,
I am embarking on a project to make a super-compact 4x5 folder. Ideally this camera will fit in a large pocket, and will have an outline not much bigger than a sheet of film.
I keep coming back to the problem that standard double dark slides are rather larger than they need to be with modern manufacturing techniques. If I want to carry a decent amount of film, they sort of overshadow and volume savings I make on a camera. Things like grafmatics can help a little, but they in themselves are rather heavy, and have quite a large footprint especially with the darkslide handle hanging out.
Anyhow, I am strongly considering making some very compact single dark slide holders, making use of the rather affordable profile cutting services that are available these days (laser, water cutting). Ideally they will be only slightly larger than the footprint of the film, just large enough to provide guides, and light tightness. The main thing keeping my brain busy is working out a compact way of providing access to load the film, and I havn't quite solved that yet. Anyway If I am successful a couple of them should fit comfortably in a pocket, which will make 4x5 much more accessible to me I feel. Oh yes just to add I will be making the registration distance something more like 1-2mm so without some kind of adapter they won't be compatible with standard cameras.
So to get to my question (comments are welcome too) I was wondering if anything like this has been produced for any large format cameras in history, surely someone has come across this problem before? Someone must have looked at all that wasted space in a standard holder with an engineers eye, and come up with a better way to do it...
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