ULF'ers,

Has anyone ever built an ULF SLR or TLR? I was thinking that 8x10 was enough and that whole plate was really ideal, but over the years several interesting pieces of gear have come my way that beg to be made into ULF cameras.

It started with a projector lens f3.6 cooke triplet 457 (18") that I built a couple fairly crude 8x10's around.

I decided I didn't much like meniscus lenses, but they really aren't that bad stopped down enough and they are inexpensive and someone gave me an iris from a theater light and I mated it to a lens board for my 8x10 field camera I restored so now I could have aperture control with those w/o waterhouse stops like the projector lens requires.

More recently, I was given 1 and bought 1 graphic arts lenses a Nikon 480mm f9 and a Goerz Artar red dot f11 450mm and I was able to get the bellows from one of the graphic arts cameras.

The bellows needs to become a field camera. Probably with the 480 mm lens.

The projector lens and the artar are close enough that they might make a good TLR, f3.6 is not a bad focusing lens aperture with a ground glass screen hood. if I could figure out how to handle film and where to store a nearly refrigerator sized box and how to transport the camera. It would probably need integral legs/wheels (and step ladder?). I see that Ilford is still making rolls of printing paper in several widths. with a suitable backing and a red window a simple film transport might not be altogether nuts. I might have to cut the roll apart to process it. at 20" squares that'd be around $5/exposure for film, and printing paper doesn't get me into contact prints with UV processes. Hm. I might have to make my own film rolls. The typical 12 exposures in a TLR would only require 20 feet of film...A packard shutter wouldn't increase the weight much. The things people will consider to avoid making film holders!