Full Plate Film Holders - Market Response Please

Rob_5419

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Feb 25, 2007
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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.
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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.
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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

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Rob_5419 said:
...email Fuji individually and ask them why whole plate film is no longer available from Fujifilm...
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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

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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.
 

Sal Santamaura

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Sanders McNew said:
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.
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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!
 
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Rolleiflexible

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Mar 22, 2005
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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
 
OP
OP

fotoman

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Apr 7, 2006
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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.
 
OP
OP

fotoman

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Apr 7, 2006
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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

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Nov 21, 2004
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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 -(
 
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