I just used household blackout curtain fabric. It's white, but it was what was locally available for $10/meter (in Canada). It's somewhat of a thicker fabric, but I liked how it turned out for an 8x10 bellows--giving the bellows a certain weighty feel and stiffness to it. I used cardboard ribs and just black broadcloth for the inner lining.
I made 2 bellows and made a different mistake on both of them: On the 8x10, I didn't alternate the narrow/wide ribs between the top/bottom and sides. Because the folds alternate between the top/sides, the ribs also need to alternate. This results in the bellows top/bottom folding flat, but the sides folding up/down. It still works, but doesn't fold flat.
The other bellows was a 5x7 and that I didn't measure it correctly: The top/bottom dimensions are the horizontal width of the opening of the back of the camera and lens standard. The side measurement is the length of the side minus the width of the top plus bottom ribs. The result was that the bellows was around 3/4" too large in the vertical dimension.
My next bellows should be good, but if you can avoid those 2 errors, making a bellows is totally doable, but fairly tedious. Both bellows had around 160 ribs each. In the end, it's quite a satisfying experience!
Attachment 239689
Attachment 239690
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