Coolest photo tool(s) you have/have used?

[Daniel Stone]

Just wondering if anyone else has been enamored by any of their tools photo-related(or indirectly photo-related)?

I treated myself to a set of the SKGrimes wrenches, they arrived last night w/ the postman. Boy these are nice, super strong. And a STEAL @ $66 shipped for both... An absolute steal. Steel construction. Super duper strong. Makes that little POS set I bought a few years ago from the P.R.C. look like toothpicks... My other cool tool I've used a lot is my Giottos rocket blower... Much better than spit on the glass when cleaning a lens . And the rubber finger-gloves from the local dollar store. Good for handling stuff that doesn't like fingerprints, like finished prints(although I usually just use the Costco nitrile non-powdered gloves.

What about you?

-Dan

[Kirk Gittings]

Damn, Those Grimes wrenches are a thing of beauty.

[Nathan Potter]

Daniel, I have those Grimes spanners also - the best I've found.

But maybe the most useful item I have is a Wild Heerbrugg M3 binocular microscope I got as it was on the way to the town landfill in Sudbury MA. Use it to inspect every film prior to scanning. Has a calibrated reticle in the eyepiece so I can roughly determine the resolution of fine features in the emulsion which then enables me to tell if a drum scan is worth while or the image will be relegated to the Epson V750 or the Nikon 5000. Smallest eyepiece division at 50X is 20 µm.

Related to the Wild is a 10µm per division Leitz substage reticle obtained from ebay for $20.
Most invaluable for calibrating a bunch of things related to photography.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[jcoldslabs]

+1 on the Grimes spanners. I only have the flat tipped version, but it paid for itself the first day by allowing me to take apart a non-cemented Xenar front element and clean the haze between the glass. Although, I did go a little crazy and wreck a second lens by stripping out the slots of the retaining ring while cross threading it at the same time. D'oh!

Jonathan

[John Kasaian]

A Printfile proofer. It makes printing contacts simpler than handling a plate of glass and getting finger prints all over the place.
Betty Crocker plastic measuring cups from Walmart---way cheaper than graduates for measuring out doses for one shot processing. I've got one each for dev, stop & fix.
Long out of producting GE Guide night lights. Plug 'em in substitutes for OC safelights. I've still got two working.
A light box for loupeing negs---I don't know how I every got by with out it.
A band saw and a drill press. It make it easy to fabricate whatever is needed in the dark room or any place else! Mine were discontinued display models I picked up cheap.
A Panavision changing bag---a fugitive from a Hollywood production company--- the best and most roomy changing bag I've come across.

[Jody_S]

I cut & threaded a bunch of retaining rings and adapters on a 5.400 lb Dean Smith & Grace engine lathe, which I had to sell when i sold my house last year. I'm currently looking for a table-top replacement that will cut threads. So far though I only have a couple of jeweler's lathes (Boley & Unimat DB 200). I still haven't successfully coated a lens with my vacuum sputter coater, so I guess that doesn't count.

[Doug Howk]

Flasher from RHDesign, attached to enlarger lensboard, enables easier printing of high DR negatives. Similarly for silver chloride papers, Besseler Audible Timers attached to lightbulb fixtures enables flashing as short as 1/10 second (normally for me, 3/10 sec for Fomalux).

[Brian Ellis]

The Salt Hill 4x5 film washer and their easel. Both were were elegant, well-made, and did the job they were designed to do with a minimum of fuss. The Aristo VCL4500 enlarger head was very nice too though nothing special to look at. Grimes wrenches were nice except that Airport Security confiscated mine when I took it through the xray machine in my backpack. They said it was a weapon. : - )

[Michael Graves]

I have a test strip easel that is slicker than batsh...that I really like a lot. I don't know who made it, and I don't see a name anywhere. But you put a 3" x 6" strip of paper into it and then open little shutters, one at a time, and give a burst of exposure each time you open one of the shutters. When you are finished developing it, you have six neatly separated rectangles of the image...moving up the scale from one burst to six bursts. I can also use it to get tests of exactly the same spot by positioning a straight-edge on the baseboard and sliding it in 1" increments and using multiple bursts.

[Ari]

Technikardan 45...sweet.