Brian,
Good luck with your pursuits, 20 x 24 can be quite a bit of fun, but its not without its warts. Time, energy, and space all become exponentially more present in your thought process. I find those thoughts manifesting themselves most often in how it relates to inertia. Once I overcome that there is nothing better than working with the big ground glass and all of the work is of course worth it
to me. There are times though when its all just more than I want to handle and I'll find imagery that day/session that will work with my 10 x 12 and/or 7 x 17 formats. I shoot both traditional silver negatives (Ilford fp4 and the occasional hp5) and Wet Plate Collodion (most often ambrotypes, tintypes, and alumitypes) with the 20 x 24. Not sure what you have worked through yet and don't wish to talk down to what you have already considered but darkroom space becomes a big issue, at least to work in this format with a system that is conducive to not fighting the room. Of course any obstacle can be overcome with enough zealous desire to be successful so my thoughts relate to best case scenario in which your concerns are about the negative shadow/highlight details etc and not whether you are going to spill water, chemistry, etc. because your set up is too small--it takes space and plenty of it. I have 18 feet of 36 inch deep sinks. I wish I had one more run of that to be honest but the room wouldn't allow it. 22 x 30 Hypo trays are what I develop in (Jobo too when its not throwing a fit). The Hypo trays are built thicker and have high walls to accommodate the momentum of the volume of liquid that is sloshing back and forth. You will lose the battle with the tray if you get traditional development trays as the water/chemistry has too much slippery strength to control, YMMV of course. If you get a print washer (outside of said Hypo tray with a syphon) it will be very big as well. Enough there I suppose.
I have been shooting 20 x 24 for close to a decade and when I bought there were less company's offering such large cameras. I bought an Ebony. Now of course you can get a Richard Ritter camera, Canham has an all metal version, Chamonix makes beautiful cameras, and you might still be able to find Lotus making large cameras, and Ebony still offers theirs.
I had two AWB holders made that have fared very well. He also made my Wet Plate holder which is starting to show the wear of the large amounts of silver which is corrosive.
My lens kit is 1000 mm Germonar, Schneider 550 xxl Fine Art, and a 355 G-Claron for 2x's life size portraits for the Negative captures,
and for my Wet Plate work a Dallmeyer 8D, Dallmeyer 30 inch RR.
May be way more information than you were looking for.
Here are some examples;
The first two are Wet Plate Collodion, the last two Gumover Platinum/Palladiums
I'll post some landscapes in another reply
best of luck,
Monty
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