Full Plate Film Holders - Market Response Please

[TheFlyingCamera]

They still make Half-plate available. Perhaps that's what has been recently deleted.

 

[Rob_5419]

Did you hear it from a Fuji rep? I asked Dirk Rosler from Megaperls (the place to get loose sheet is looking into the Fuji Acros whole plate sized film, but I haven't heard back from him yet.

That's correct: a photographer colleague of mine who works in the Far East got in touch with Yosuke Asou at Fuji's Customer Services and forwarded the correspondence to me. It may have been some confusion with the English language which led to the omission of 'half'-plate film availability.

Fuji's explanation was that they did not have the tooling facilities for whole plate film. When asked how come they could cut 10x8" Fuji Acros, there was no reply.

You may be better off satisfying your own curiosity: email Fuji individually and ask them why whole plate film is no longer available from Fujifilm. I'd rather people did that in order to create sufficient awareness at Fujifilm that their absence is being felt, rather than just believing what I've heard.

They still make Half-plate available. Perhaps that's what has been recently deleted.

Grief! Don't start...!

Half-plate Fuji Acros film has not been deleted. Yousuke Asou said no such thing. You do realise now it's going to take about 20 pages + of forum comments to eventually calm the hysteria that will follow this 'maybe discontinued' comment now!

Would everyone please just email Fujifilm personally and ask why whole plate film is not available - they will give a straight answer. They have a contact address on their website:

http://www.fujifilm.co.uk/contact/

Ask away.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

...email Fuji individually and ask them why whole plate film is no longer available from Fujifilm...

I'd not waste the effort. Market forces drive product availability. Rather than pressure Fuji, why not choose from the two fine emulsions Ilford offers in whole plate, FP4 Plus and HP5 Plus?

Don't misunderstand; Acros is a fine film. I use it in QuickLoads when traveling with a 4x5. But, for the long term, Ilford is much more likely to be supplying us black and white sheet film than is Fuji. In my opinion supporting Ilford is a better strategy for ensuring product availablity.

 

[Rob_5419]

That's true Sal.

The Fuji option mattered only because some of the photographers out in the Far East don't have easy access to the Ilford whole-plate options. Ilford has never advertised it there, so many expat photographers based out in the Far East are in the dark about Ilford products altogether.

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Count me in -- if I can line up a camera, I'm good for at least five for a first purchase, with another five if I can make the rig work for me.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Sanders- you can get a back made and slap it onto another rear standard for your Norma and make a FrankenSinar. Piece of cake.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

Count me in -- if I can line up a camera, I'm good for at least five for a first purchase, with another five if I can make the rig work for me.

That's great to hear Sanders. Once you fall in love with the format, considering how much film you use, I suspect Ilford might even put this size into its standard catalog!

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Sal, I sense a bad addiction coming on. I'm already buying TXP by the case from a guy down in Mexico. Somehow I doubt I'm going to find greymarket sources for Ilford whole-plate. :-(

Sanders

 

[Oren Grad]

Sal, I sense a bad addiction coming on.

Correction: good addiction.

 

[fotoman]

FOTOMAN UPDATE... we are very close to producing our new 4x10 holders, having already seen two pre-production runs and made the appropriate "tweaks" to the molds. As mentioned previously, the 4x10 holders are our guinea pigs. So far all is looking very good indeed. Testing will commence with the samples from the next pre-production run (about 10 days), which puts us on target (July) for the 5x7 and WP holders... assuming testing goes as anticipated.

Other developments... we will be producing both a 5x7 and WP camera to round out our PS series of large format cameras. Also in the works... economical pre-cut 4x10, 5x7 and WP sized B&W film (ISO 100 - ERA Brand). Film testing is in process... if it compares to FP4 Plus (what we've heard from others), film would be available about the same time as our holders.

 

[Terence]

Outstanding news. Thanks.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

BUMP. Any word on a release date for these yet?

 

[colrehogan]

BUMP. Any word on a release date for these yet?

The estimate is sometime in July.

 

[fotoman]

Film Holder Update... for all those interested, we are pretty much on schedule. We wound up making three pre-production runs of our guinea pig 4x10 holder to experiment with different plastic formulations. While this delayed us by a couple of weeks, it proved quite valuable... we will be using ABS-PC as opposed to the pure ABS which we initially had specified. ABS-PC, while 10% heavier, provides a much harder surface which will wear much less over the years.

Net-net, it looks like LATE July or early August for delivery.

 

[Nick Zentena]

Can I ask how the 5x7s are going?

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Nick- I think he means all the formats, not just whole-plate. I saw this same reply over on LFInfo, in regards to 5x7 holders. I know they're making 4x10, 8x10, 5x7 and whole-plate sizes, and possibly some other (ULF? perhaps?) as well.

 

[Nick Zentena]

I saw that after I posted. Seems kind of confusing. I would have thought that one format would have come first to work out the kinks. But I'm okay with them all at once -)

New 8x10 seems to be a need now -(

 

[Sal Santamaura]

...I would have thought that one format would have come first to work out the kinks...

It did. Paul says he's been using 4x10 for that purpose.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Nick-

If you look on their website, they're making 8x10 holders at this time. Kind of a no-brainer since their 4x10 holders are just cut-down 8x10s.