Glow in the dark camera.

[Sevo]

Today I had a spare half an hour to try daylight exposure. Either half an hour is to much time or I over exposed it while taking out the GITD plate.

Probably the latter (i.e. ambient pollution). As the GITD paint lose stored energy, they'll pretty much behave like filling a sieve with water - it will be peak exposure intensity (and fast read-out) that matters, not duration, and any exposure times longer than the time it takes to lose half the charge after being flashed are effectively wasted.

[unixrevolution]

Probably the latter (i.e. ambient pollution). As the GITD paint lose stored energy, they'll pretty much behave like filling a sieve with water - it will be peak exposure intensity (and fast read-out) that matters, not duration, and any exposure times longer than the time it takes to lose half the charge after being flashed are effectively wasted.

Okay, silly idea.

What if you mounted a small digital still camera to the front standard inside the bellows, just above or below the lensboard? Take the exposure, then as soon as the shutter's closed, take a photo with the internal digital camera and a remote release on some pre-set focus distance and manual or autoexposure. It may have a little unwanted extra perspective, but you'd get a picture of the just-taken photograph at maximum intensity.

I mean, why bother taking it to a dark place to photograph it, losing intensity all the way, when it's already in a dark place? Even my 4x5 monorail has space inside for a compact digital camera.

[Steven Scanner]

I like silly idea's.
That is a good practical idea. However, I've got a view camera. It can tilt, shift, rise and fall. So placing the digital camera on the lens board requires ajusting the board before I take a digital photograph. My plan is to build a box where I can slide the film cartridge in on one end and place a DSLR on the other end. All light tight. Eventually, I'm looking for a way to use the GITD technique to make an analogue image.

[Vincent Pidone]

Any scanner that can scan transparencies does it by turning off the internal light and switching on a light in the scanner's lid.

Find a used or cheap scanner that can handle transparencies and leave the lamp in the lid covered and you can scan your glow in the dark paint.

[unixrevolution]

I like silly idea's.
That is a good practical idea. However, I've got a view camera. It can tilt, shift, rise and fall. So placing the digital camera on the lens board requires ajusting the board before I take a digital photograph. My plan is to build a box where I can slide the film cartridge in on one end and place a DSLR on the other end. All light tight. Eventually, I'm looking for a way to use the GITD technique to make an analogue image.

Wouldn't printing your GITD image on analog media take you right back to your problem of not wanting to keep darkroom chemicals around?

I do like the DSLR box idea. I just thought with the digicam inside the camera you could avoid as much loss of luminance from the GITD paint as possible.

Regarding the scanner idea, Vincent: Do transparency scanners use the whole scanning bed?

My solution in that case would be to get a *very* cheap flatbed scanner and clip the leads to the lamps.

[Vincent Pidone]

Unix,

It depends on the scanner.

The width of the lamp in the lid is the issue.

Based on price: cheap ones do 35mm and maybe 2 1/4 by however long the scanner bed is .

Mid range will do 4x5" (4 inch wide lamp), and expensive ones will do 8x10" (8" lamp).

I suspect that you could try a 35mm transparency scanner with the lid removed and provide your own lamp.

Maybe only some of the sensors work for transparencies, I'm not sure.

It might be worth checking for the several threads about building a scanner based camera back, as they have probably tested this stuff already.