what waS your last photography related purchase?

Kino

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For something that touchy, I'll use percentage solutions. Much cheaper than a scale...
 

Kodachromeguy

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No need for VueScan yet. NikonScan loaded on my Win 7 32 bit computer, so now I will wait impatiently for the Coolscan to arrive.

I will also check on the price of SilverFast. They used to offer reduced price to existing customers. And I may have a 4000 license that I can migrate.
 

GLS

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koraks said:
That would be around 0.1g real world accuracy
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I can confirm from real world experience that for balances rated up to kilos, 0.1g is the best accuracy you're going to get.

At work we have an analytical balance that reads down to 0.00001 g, but even on a granite block and with careful technique the last digit is essentially meaningless. Just the residual static charge on your hands/clothes/objects or minor air currents are enough to cause fluctuations in it.
 
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Donald Qualls

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chuckroast said:
I wanted to use VueScan with a scanner that has no Linux drivers.
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Well, that's the beauty of Vuescan -- it bypasses OS level drivers and communicates directly with the scanner hardware. Though possibly not the case with sufficiently old or obscure hardware...
 

chuckroast

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Donald Qualls said:
Well, that's the beauty of Vuescan -- it bypasses OS level drivers and communicates directly with the scanner hardware. Though possibly not the case with sufficiently old or obscure hardware...
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If memory serves - it's been a while - when VS itself doesn't have a driver it tries to use SANE or the equivalent underlying driver layer. In my case, I have an old Microtec I wanted to use as a film scanner but VS couldn't handle it.
 

Andrew O'Neill

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The Fujinon W 180 arrived (the single-coated version that covers 8x10). Looks minty, glass is clean, and shutter speeds appear sound. Now if I can find my darn lens board wrench!
 

FriedLouisStudio

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I received the Olympus Pen S I'd posted about last week... and it's in even better condition than I expected. For an over-60-year-old camera, it looks like it was never used. I plan to shoot a short test roll of TX in the next couple of days.

Now my Pen F has a cute little brother!

 

MurrayMinchin

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No Name (Canadian budget brand) drain opener for stripping photopolymer film (Eternal E9220) from reusable PETG plates.

Tried isopropyl alcohol, but it stank like booze and didn't work well.

Put 200ml of the drain cleaner (probably a bit less than 50% sodium hydroxide solution with some soap sud surfactants) into 900ml of water...stripped plates absolutely clean in about 15 minutes with no agitation.
 
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mshchem

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I've got a 1929 booklet coming by EKCo. on Artura papers, prices and formulas. When the dollar was tied to gold at $20.67/Troy ounce you could buy enormous amounts of paper for 5 bucks

It's all relative
 

Nokton48

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Soonpho Projection and Beauty Lights Impact Mount by Nokton48, on Flickr

I have wanted Projection Spots for my Impact strobes for quite a while, the Impacts at 300J are powerful enough shooting in close. Soonpho Projection Units, two of them have the supplemental condenser evens the light out better. The third one is the original diffusion design which fits the Visatec 1600B, as it has a deeper tube mount. All three have Adapters from Canon EF, to Minolta SRT mount. Shown back left, is the 100mm F4 Bellows Rokkor, on a Minolta SRT Bellows. In front left is a 100mm F2 Pre-MC Rokkor, super bright lens. On the far right front, is the Soft Focus Spiratone Portragon, with Honeycomb Grid, and SRT Adapter to EF. Now I also have the 85mm F2.8 and 150mm F2.8 made by Soonpho for this. And in the back center, two Soonpho Twelve Inch Baby Beauty Lights, with Honeycomb Grids. All this stuff fits my Impact and Impact S units, as well as my Visatec 1600B's. The Baby Beauty Lights both have Rosco Polarization Sheets held in place by the Honeycombs. With the Polarizer on the lens, these babies can have their reflections removed in the images. Useful to me.

TTL 4x5 5x7 8x10 Broncolor Strobe Meters Norma Sinarsix Cassettes by Nokton48, on Flickr

Another new to me Broncolor studio enhancement. Early on I stockpiled Sinar Norma Meter Cassettes, here are 4x5, 5x7, and 8x10 Versions. I bought this FCM2 Ambient/Strobe Meter, which I never used much. Just now an Internet Friend offered me a second one, it has been upgraded from FCM to FCM2, by Larry at Broncolor Service. The difference I'm told is four meter cells versus two. Anyway these read TTL ambient, flash strobe, or combinations thereof. Once these are properly tested and calibrated I'm switching to TTL, which should add amazing exposure control, and should eliminate costly bracketing of exposures, when shooting expensive sheet films. Exposure variations can compound, causing unexpected results sometimes. These should eliminate a lot of that. BTW these meters were over $500 each new; I paid about $30 for each of these. More good Broncolor purchases, also they control my Pulso Power Packs by remote Infared control, which speeds up shooting setup time. I used Velcro from Lowes to attach the FCM's to the Olde Norma Meter Cassettes.
 

rcap

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My last purchase was some Kodak HC-110 Developer and Ilford Rapid Fixer.
 

murdockhendrix

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Arriving today a Holga 120N black.
 

koraks

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Some RGB LEDs to play with, for color RA4 printing. I've assembled and briefly tested a new light source using these LEDs this morning, but have yet to mount it into the enlarger for some more testing. I hope to test these side by side with the LED array I've been using lately and perhaps even do a quick comparison against a dichroic Durst.


This is the new LED head I made yesterday/today. It's designed to run at around 100W RMS, which is !!!BRIGHT!!! given that this is LED, not halogen. It needs to be mounted to a suitable cooler; not shown in this photo, yet, but I've done that, too.

All electronics design, layout, PCB etching, soldering etc. is done here at home, which is fun if you like that sort of thing.
 

Mal Paso

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Very Cool! Hope you have a way to trim power. I have 30 printing watts, the power is turned all the way down and exposures are way too short.
 

mshchem

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Cool, I used to think that I needed such a device for my Zone VI enlargers but color negative film in 8x10 sheets are $$$.
I took an electronics class in junior high school, I built a tachometer (from a kit)
 

mshchem

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What are the dimensions of the circuit board? This is cool. I wonder if substituting an array of LEDs for halogen lamps (and removing dichro filters) in an existing colorhead could be made to work? ( probably a waste of time)
 

koraks

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Mal Paso said:
Very Cool! Hope you have a way to trim power. I have 30 printing watts, the power is turned all the way down and exposures are way too short.
Click to expand...

Cool; what kind of light source is it?
This is all PWM controlled (16 bit), so not a problem. Also, this is for my Durst 138 which is a 5x7" enlarger (I only use it up to 4x5" though). I find this power level is actually OK; it's plenty fast enough for color work but probably on the slow side for large B&W prints on warmtone paper - but I don't do those much, anyway. A previous version was around 350W RMS - this was a bit much. I actually implemented a digital ND filter to run it at down to 12.5% for smaller prints.

mshchem said:
I took an electronics class in junior high school
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That's technically more than the formal education I've got in this area, lol!

mshchem said:
What are the dimensions of the circuit board?
Click to expand...

It's a 10mm grid on the cutting mat, so the entire PCB is 100x56mm and the light emitting area is around 80x44mm. The limiting factor here is the old Intel cooler I had lying around and I wanted to mount this onto. The 350W version mentioned earlier was 100x160mm.

mshchem said:
I wonder if substituting an array of LEDs for halogen lamps (and removing dichro filters) in an existing colorhead could be made to work?
Click to expand...

Yes, it would. The main trick is to get even illumination. Heiland does this by skipping any condensers and diffusion chambers already present in the enlarger and just plonking a large array of LEDs with a diffuser plate right on top of the negative carrier. I prefer to keep using the condensers in my 138, which is a little trickier, but also a little more efficient than the Heiland approach. So I'm effectively doing what you're proposing; the light source shown here will drop right on top of the existing bulb socket of the 138 (originally intended for an opal bulb btw; this is an oooold version). For smaller enlargers, you could do a smaller array of LEDs on a smaller PCB.

I was playing with the thought of doing this with a Durst M305 I was about to be gifted, but then I found a local skate club with some analog photography enthusiasts and decided to gift it to them so they can enlarge their color negatives with it.
 
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