Wanderlust 4x5 P&S

[Corran]

Bummer. A bit of a setback is described in the latest Update on KS. Just a delay, not anything terminal.

I hope you guys are at least going to make some money at the end of the day with this.

[Ben Syverson]

Bummer. A bit of a setback is described in the latest Update on KS. Just a delay, not anything terminal.

I hope you guys are at least going to make some money at the end of the day with this.

Yeah, it's never fun to have to announce a setback. If we do another batch of cameras after this one is shipped, there's a chance we'll make a small amount. But as a product, it's extremely low margin.

My hope is that we can introduce some other, simpler accessories to generate some income and help support the flagship camera.

[Kirk Gittings]

I appreciate the update and your dedication to doing this right. I would love to have it tomorrow but whenever is better if it means it works properly.

Damn. You are in Chicago and an SAIC alum. I was just there for 2 months teaching a class. I would have loved to have gotten together and see what you are doing! (BTW the associate provost ordered one of your cameras! He was hoping to get his by late August for an artist residency.....).

[Ben Syverson]

Kirk, you teach in Chicago fairly regularly, don't you? Next time you're in town, by all means get in touch!

[Kirk Gittings]

I will-probably next summer but not to teach but working on a personal project. Also I sent you a PM.

[Kuzano]

I am patient. Would rather you find these issues now than after in hands.

Re: making more money, I will be particularly interested in what you do with back extensions (no moving parts... change lens, snap back in place and go!!!) to make the travelwide more flexible in terms of lens selection. I suggest picking very specific lenses to avoid all the testing/tweaking for every lens in the market. It would be worth some money to me (more than you might think) to expand the camera to a 127-135 range, such as the Polaroid Ysarex 127 in polaroid shutter, and then a 150 to 180.

Also backs to be used with pano roll film holders and a lens range of 135mm (read roll film holders here).

I would think you have a strong market with 1500 Travelwides out there in the field and if you watch the mating area, could be used with other camera's using standard film holder mounts.

A couple of these backs would still fit easily in the light kit bags being envisioned/used. I wouldn't balk at a $100 back that would expand my camera to one more camera potential with just the clamp on back, rather than a new cone assembly.

[Ben Syverson]

I was talking with someone in the IDEO office about the challenge of finding the right ground glass texture, and they reminded me about our swatch library. I never even noticed that we had Mold-Tech swatches.

For those unfamiliar with Mold-Tech, they add textures to plastic molds using photochemical etching. And they produce three-ring swatch binders that are kind of like Pantone books for plastic textures. Each page is a thick plastic sheet with a few possible textures.

At IDEO we have six or seven of these, and in each one, the pages are black. I pored through every page with a flashlight and a loupe, looking for a good texture. I selected one page of textures that looked promising.

At the end of the stack, I found the holy grail: two transparent pages, one of which was the critical page!



I immediately put it behind the Travelwide and started testing...



I can't explain how different it is to see these textures on transparent plastic rather than black. On the black page, I identified one swatch as the best candidate, but after testing, I picked a very different swatch.

Seeing so many possible ground glass textures was… illuminating (sorry). The finest matte textures had impossibly clear center focus—the brightest and clearest image I've ever seen on a ground glass. It felt brighter than real life. However, the corners were 100% black. Some of the heavier textures had fantastic uniformity across the frame, but the overall brightness was very low.

Ultimately, a ground glass texture has a built-in compromise. On the one hand, a primary purpose of the ground glass part is to aid in focus calibration, so you want great resolution. On the other hand, many users will want to use the ground glass for image composition in addition to focusing.

I think we found a great texture, at least based on the sample. Here's hoping our final part looks that great.

And of course, all of this happened hours after I posted my most recent update, so I'll have to wait a week to roll it into the next Kickstarter / mailing list update.

[Brian Puccio]

Awesome, thanks for the (double) update!

[plywood]

Re ground glass textures;
Great to hear about your discovery Ben. As regards edge and corner brightness of the overall screen when my 90 arrives I'm going to look for one of the smaller fresnel magnifers at an office supply and slip it behind your screen. Hey, it's worth a try for the overall view.

Who knew, at the start, how complicated this whole process would be. You and Justin are to be congratulated for working so hard to bring this idea to reality.

Please, please, make a provision on your site for those of us who want to buy the excess pinhole's and the plastic GG that didn't work out. The DIY crowd is just waiting to get their hands on these 'failed' items.

[Kuzano]

Cheap Ground Glass needs were the reason I started going to Tupperware parties many years ago. Larger tupperware products provided some excellent material and textured surfaces for 4X5 ground glass substitutes.

Meeting some lovely ladies was simply an unanticipated bonus.