My contact was through his eBay account - I have never spoken to him. I replied to his message asking for his regular e-mail address but he did not replied to it. I've given up, at least for now.
Stone- give up your holders - you can't use them anyway. I might be interested...
I give up as well, no Mido for me. Back to the fidelity of lisco.
Thank you all for the input...
A solution that I have found that occasionally works for me as a lightweight alternative to regular film holders is to use a Mackenzie Wishart Daylight Slide. The system goes back to the early years of the 20th Century and utilizes thin metal or vinyl film envelopes which are placed one at a time into the Darkslide enclosure.Their would appear to be two different types with the metal ones each envelope has it's own rigid darkslide. So a dark slide on the holder is not needed. With the vinyl ones the dark slide incorporated into the holder when withrawn takes the darkslide of the vinyl envelope with it. The holder provides the rigidity that the envelopes lack. The envelopes are very very light. On our kitchen scales the metal ones are approx 30g . The vinyl ones are much less.The quarter plate darkslide holder itself weighs about 100 grams.
I also have recently acquired but not yet used a 4x5 Mackenzie Wishart Darkslide with vinyl envelopes. It and 12 envelopes weighs 500g compared to a 12 shot 4x5 Graflex Bag Mag which weighs 700g loaded. Unfortunately the envelopes are difficult but not impossible to find, They might be worth the trouble of hunting for or even making if you are seriously into Ultralight Large Format work. 3D printer maybe? The Daylight slides themselves are really quite common and their is generally at least one advertised on Ebay at anyone time.
Another heavier option is to use a Graflex Bag Mag as a lighter alternative to a Grafmatic. A Bag Mag and 12 loaded septums being lighter than two Grafmatic holders. I have a Quarter plate Sanderson Field Camera which I use with a Mackenzie Wishart Darkslide and metal holders. I have also made another back for it by adapting a 3x4 Graflex back to fit it. This allows me to use Bagmags and Graflex roll film holders on it.
The Sanderson with the darkslide with 11 metal envelopes and a lightweight changing bag which does double duty as a dark cloth weighs in at under 2 kg.
1/4 Plate Sanderson with Mackenze Wishart Daylight slide with metal film envelopes fitted.
The Darkslides for Vinyl envelopes are marked Patent A and those for the thin metal envelopes are marked Patent B. The ones I am calling Vinyl ones I am quite sure are not made of Vinyl but I am calling them that for convenience and because they would appear to be made of a material with similar properties.
Hope this is of some help to someone
Roger
Very interesting Roger, I wasn't aware there are other systems as well.
If you move a way from 4x5 their are plenty of other film holding systems many that offer great weight saving over 4x5 without losing that much in terms of film area. In what you might say was the heyday of larger format film say during the 20's and 30's their were plenty of systems which offered considerable weight and in particular bulk savings often more important than weight saving.Originally Posted by HeinrichVoelkel
Check out the Patent Etui for instance http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Patent_Etui
9x12 is not that much smaller than 4x5 but the camera weighs only 815g. The single metal holders for that camera are relatively heavy for their size though but two of them take up less bulk and are lighter than a 4x5 double dark slide.
A 3 1/4x 41/4 Graflex Bag Mag designed for use with film septums loaded with 12 film septums weighs only 450g. I have heard that the Bag Mags designed for film plates which are thicker can also be used with film septums from the later mags and that 18 Septums can then be fitted in them. I have however never done that.
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