• Welcome to Photrio!
    Registration is fast and free. Join today to unlock search, see fewer ads, and access all forum features.
    Click here to sign up

Anybody using one of these for 4X5 film processing?


Thanks very much. Glad your finding it useful.
 
I've made a vid on my processors.

Hopefully this may help in explaining how it works.

[video=youtube;Mt_Lzd3LUnQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt_Lzd3LUnQ[/video]

No whitty commments on my presenting style.

Cheers,

Morgan.
 
Your presentation style is quite o.k.

A question: does the holder leave marks at the edges of the sheets, where the film is in contact with the holder?
 
Q.G. said:
Your presentation style is quite o.k.

A question: does the holder leave marks at the edges of the sheets, where the film is in contact with the holder?
Click to expand...

In my experience no. I think that that sheets are continuously wet for most of the process so i suspect liquid probably helps prevent marking.

But, there are several users on here who have bought one so you could also check with them.

Cheers,

Morgan.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks.
If you don't get marks, they will not either, i think.

Another question: is this a 'limited' availability product, or could i get one, say, 6 months from now too?
I ask because i think i will want to buy one, but not quite now.
 
Q.G. said:
Thanks.
If you don't get marks, they will not either, i think.

Another question: is this a 'limited' availability product, or could i get one, say, 6 months from now too?
I ask because i think i will want to buy one, but not quite now.
Click to expand...

As long as there is a demand, I'll be selling.

Cheers,

Morgan.
 
MOD_Photographic said:
Hopefully this may help in explaining how it works.

[video=youtube;Mt_Lzd3LUnQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt_Lzd3LUnQ[/video]

No whitty commments on my presenting style.

Cheers,

Morgan.
Click to expand...

Well done!

Steve
 
I love it. Very cool. Looks to be a whole lot better than the HP CombiPlan that I'm using now.
 
I've been using the processor for the last 3 months and have not had any marks on the sheets.

Morgan, I haven't checked out your video instructions as yet, but I'm sure that they are more than informative.

Dave
 
Mine just arrived today, and I think this is a really well designed piece of gear. After practicing with some old scratched negs for a couple of minutes, I found loading the holder to be almost automatic. Even if you jam 2 sheets into one slot, it's very easy to feel that you've done that, and just as easy to pull the offending sheet back to it's proper slot. I should mention that I discovered how easy this is to load before I watched Morgan's video.

Now I'm waiting for the film I ordered to arrive so I can get shooting again!

Thanks for designing these Morgan, and more importantly, for sharing them with the rest of us!
 
wow,

this makes me want to go out and buy a patterson 3 reel tank ..
i wish you made one that works with the stainless tanks ...
i never have been a fan of patterson / yankee reels.

- john
 
Mine arrived the other day ! Almost ready to shoot my first few sheets of film (I was about to say rolls ).
Quick question though. How are these in 5 reel tanks ? I nabbed one off the auction site a few weeks back, but it does seem a tad tall !
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It should be fine. Tell you what to do. Wrap a rubber band around the spindle above the film holder so it doesn't slip when you invert it. There's supposed to be a clip that goes around the spindle, but these often go missing and that's no great loss. After a while they don't grip so well. The rubber band trick works every time. There's no need to fill the tank more than necessary.
 
lordvader said:
Mine arrived the other day ! Almost ready to shoot my first few sheets of film (I was about to say rolls ).
Quick question though. How are these in 5 reel tanks ? I nabbed one off the auction site a few weeks back, but it does seem a tad tall !
Click to expand...

If you have the white circular holder put it around the light trap to keep the processor at the bottom. If you don't have it, use a rubber band; double it over a few times and roll it down the light trap tube after you have the processor on it.

In fact, I suspect you can load the holder onto the light trap and secure it in room light, then just load the film in the dark. It's easy-peezy to load.

So what if you have airspace above the film. It's no different than using a 5 reel tank to develop only 3 reels of 35mm.
MB
 
Thanks for the feed back !
I'll try the rubber band thing. Sounds better than putting empty reels on the top, which just means I have more wet reels waiting to dry, hence unusable
 
Used mine yesterday for the first time, loaded in a Calumet changing tent no problem. As someone said above it's easy to tell if the film isn't in the correct slot. With gentle inversions the film sheets stayed in their slots throughout the processing and the negatives came out well with no signs of uneven development. What I like about it its the use of the Paterson tank which is a familiar piece of kit and fills and empties easily.

- Tony
 
Morgan,
Any plans for a 5x7 version? If you could figure it out I think you'd do well as the only other option out there is the now discontinued 5x7 combiplan. In the last ten years I've seen only two come up on ebay and they went for hundreds of dollars.
 

Its tough.

At best you'd only get 4 sheets in.

The extra inch makes so much difference.

I'm looking into it.

Cheers,

Morgan.
 
Hello Morgan,
What about the 5x7 version if you make use of the bigger Paterson 5 reels tank ?
I for one would be greatly interrested in a jig to process 13x18/5x7 film in a Paterson tank. It will be an alternative to the Jobo expert tanks...
Keep studying it, please !
 
Processing "only" four sheets of 13x18 in a Paterson would be a great thing!
 
Quick question about inversion techniques for these.
I'm using the 5 reel paterson tank, and am using ilfords recommended inversion technique, which is 30 seconds continuous, then 10 seconds every minute. With a small tank, I get about 4-5 inversions in those 10 seconds, but I feel with the large tank, 4-5 inversions may be a bit hectic, and the film is coming loose, and "sticking" to other sheets.
They did seem to develop fine though, so it may have been during fixing or stop bath that I was a tad more vigorous.

What inversion techniques do you lot use ?
 
Though I'll add a little update.

I had another go in the 5 reel tank, and again I was noticing some sheets coming loose and sticking together. Then I got to thinking, given I'm using a 1.5 liter tank, and only 1 liter of liquid, the water is a lot more turbulent during agitation, not to mention the giant air bubble moving through the system during inversion (you can really hear it). So for my final rinse stage, I filled the tank with water, inverted it 20 times, and viola ! The sheets were completely in place !

I want to verify these results, but if they hold, perhaps someone may want to trade a 3 reel tank for a totally awesome 5 reel tank ???
 
I'm getting the itch to buy one of these myself... but there aren't any on eBay at the moment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register