Anyone looking to manufacture LF film holders might want to check this out

[frobozz]

Ha! The seller relisted it after the auction ended. This time the Buy It Now price is $750, but no Make Offer button, so he won't be pestered by people like me ;-)

Duncan

 

[Ektagraphic]

A long while now. As were the lots KEH purchased (all gone). And the lots Freestyle purchased (currently on clearance). There are just too many old ones available, and not enough photographers who want, and can afford, new ones.

But film holders get beat up petty quickly in normal use. Then what??

I have 30-4x5s, 15-5x7s, and 17-8x10s. All either new, or in nice shape. I'm treating them with great care. We'll see how long they last.

Ken

Interesting...Hopefully when the demand comes up for new holders, a solution will have come along. Down the road, maybe a Kickstarter project for holder manufacture...or maybe even 3D printers could help with the solution some day.

So Toyo-View are among the only larger companies still manufacturing holders?

I am guessing that another issue for LF is going to be the fact that Copal is no longer making their mechanical shutters...but that's a whole other can of worms.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Ha! The seller relisted it after the auction ended. This time the Buy It Now price is $750, but no Make Offer button, so he won't be pestered by people like me ;-)

A 70% reduction? Maybe he's also reading along in this thread??



Providing the tooling is stashed somewhere and still available, I'd love to see someone with experience in small volume manufacturing take a crack at a cottage-level restart.

My sense from talking to Calumet several years ago was that the manufacturing of the holders was ended due to management decisions regarding a larger consolidation of analog products in general. Much later, as I watched Calumet go bankrupt—reported in several places as possibly due to issues of poor management and not poor sales—I better understood what may have been going on.

The thing is, making those holders was already a one-man cottage industry for Calumet/Fidelity. At least that's what I was told. And when the one man retired, it stopped. Except several years ago when the price of used 5x7 holders began to spike on eBay, and Calumet authorized a new run of that size.

I have four of those 5x7 holders from that final batch, brand new in their 13x18-cm mislabeled boxes because it was less expensive to place a handwritten "5x7" piece of tape over "13x18" than to also print a whole new run of correctly labeled boxes.

When Calumet dumped their final remaining lots of already manufactured 4x5 holders on eBay (pallet-sized lots of 1,600 holders, as I seem to recall), they sold out. Presumably to B&H and Freestyle and KEH and others, who put them up for sale.

KEH was selling them brand new for only US$17 per holder in ziplock bags without packaging. A killer deal. I bought 20 to round out my lifetime supply. Then I tried to give everyone a heads-up in this APUG post: (there was a url link here which no longer exists). They quickly sold out at that price.

The point being, for the right price the demand for new holders is still there. Large format has been a relative bright spot over the last few years. It's one of the few areas where new film camera manufacturing continues.

And with the Toyo 8x10 holders now going for ~US$210 each new, decent used Fidelity 8x10 holders are becoming harder and harder to find at workable prices. The last brand new boxed pair of 8x10 Elites I saw on eBay was asking US$350.

Ken

 

[TStodPhoto]

It looks like they finally sold the stuff and in my opinion if I had purchased them I would make ULF sizes and the hard to find European sizes and maybe make some wet plate holders. In regards to ULF I would make 20x24,12x20,14x17,14x20 plus other sizes that are difficult to find and etc.

Plus maybe do what Ilford does and make a run a few times a year unless there is issues with the manufacturing process and if only one man can run it than I'm sure another person can do it again but where will they find if its even possible to find the old machines they had used to make them? I'm sure either they were dismantled or auctioned off?

 

[frobozz]

The auction ended with no sale. I guess this time it was a one-day auction. I'm sure they will relist them again. Maybe they're regretting dissing my $50 offer ;-)

Duncan

 

[TStodPhoto]

@Frobozz correction it actually sold! If the person bought it starts up production again and that's a big "If" I think best bet would be a Kickstarter in my opinion! I personally would donate to a Kickstarter but that's just me. We will have to wait and see I guess?

 

[AgX]

This listing was ended by the seller because there was an error in the listing.

is what I get.


The offer stated that documents would include all formats. That would include metric sized as they were made by Fidelity too.

 

[frobozz]

OK, ebay is having issues. For TStodPhoto the auction shows "Sold" For AgX the auction shows "listing ended early" For me it just shows "Ended" I thought maybe the source of confusion was that he had listed it a third time, so we were looking at different auctions, so I went and looked at the seller's completed listings. It only shows up two times, but the second one shows in that list with the price in green, which it only does for SOLD listings. So yeah, it looks like they must have sold!

Duncan

 

[TStodPhoto]

Anybody's thoughts on the buyers intentions? The plans are kind of a historical part of film photography that I believe someone else mentioned? Who would support the remanufacturing of these things? If they did that but I'm only assuming that they are going to restart manufacturing them in the future? Which sizes would you as large format and ultra large format photographers would like to see be made? If they did I would like to see more 5x7,8x10, 12x20 & 20x24 the latter two were never made so that would be an interesting factor for me.

 

[holmburgers]

Between injection molding on a huge scale and 3D printing on a small scale, let's not forget that there's a huge world of machining in between, namely the simple CNC router. If you approach the design from a radically different perspective, one can utilize different manufacturing techniques to produce high-quality things at low prices.

And with the trend of "distributed manufacturing" growing, like with ponoko.com, and with local maker spaces popping up here and there, more and more lay people have access to this kind of machining and tools.

Two examples that spring to mind are the MOD 5x4" processor** and the In Camera Industries plate holder. Certain parts of the latter were made with ponoko.com I believe.

As stated above, the ANSI standards for a film holder are what's really important. Blue prints from Fidelity are just cool historical documents. Not exactly a get rich quick scheme...

**Interestingly enough, the latest version of the MOD 5x4" processor appears to be injection molded, whereas the original version was just solvent-welded, CNC-routed plastic sheet stock.

 

[DREW WILEY]

No sense trying to extract DNA from a mosquito in a blob of amber for some kind of Jurassic Park concept. Far easier to begin from scratch
using modern materials and mfg techniques. Make it a labor of love, because you're never going to break even on new patents and marketing.