Category: Kit/Equipment

Making sense of Jobo daylight film processing tanks

Nicolai Grossman 1 Comment

The Jobo daylight film processing system seems confusing at first, and their web site is an unhelpful mess, but IMO it’s worth working through, because the stuff is good and does what it says it’s going to do well. Here’s what I have (all link to B&H):

#2561 tank with magnet base, holds 2 x 4×5 reels (12 sheets total), or 4 reels of 120, 220, or 127, or 6 reels of 135. You can get extension tubes for this tank to make it huge if you want to. There is a variant of this tank with a cog, which I’ve heard sucks for inversion and roller base processing, so unless you’re going to get the fancy temperature controller processor, stick with the magnet.

#2509N sheet film reel, holds up to 6 sheets. (Also holds 9x12cm.)

#2502 adjustable reel, fits 135, 127, 120, and 220 (you can gang up 2 rolls of 120 onto a single reel).

#1509 manual roller base, not necessary if you opt to use more chemistry and do inversion.

This gives me a nice, flexible system that will handle 135 through 4×5 in the same tank for not a lot of money. I’ve been really happy with it so far, I like it better than the Paterson system I was using for 135 and 120 and the dreaded Combi-Plan (of which I wrote a very profane review and follow-up).

There’s also the #2508 sheet film loader base (requires a film guide), which is meant to make loading sheet film easier, but I’ve never used it.

If you want to go fancier, there’s the Jobo expert drums, which are for sheet film only. I’ve heard they’re unbelievably easy to load, people seem to really love them, but they are more expensive, and I haven’t used them and can’t comment on them, either.

More cowbell: extreme photography equipment roundup

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Check out this roundup of crazy sh*t, including the Sigma APO 200-500mm f/2.8 and Zeiss Apo Sonnar T* 1700mm f/4 lenses and a 6×17 inch camera:

There are several categories of camera gear available: there’s the sensible, the desirable and then there’s the stuff that you’d never even imagined. Here’s a selection of equipment that most definitely belongs in the latter category…

Continue reading at Crestock

Get vertical

Nicolai Grossman 2 Comments

I just snagged an Olympus Pen FT from fleabay. The Pen F series are half-frame 35mm SLRs (what actually used to be "full frame", the size that 35mm cinema frames still are… what we today call full frame was originally called double frame!).

Square composition definitely shook my world up, and I’m excited to see what composing with a vertical viewfinder does to how I see. I can also see how getting 72 shots per roll could go either way: a blessing if you’re shooting a lot, and a curse if you’re casually taking a shot here and there over the course of a week.

Arca Swiss Monoball Z1 ballhead review at The Digital Picture

Nicolai Grossman 2 Comments

Unique to the Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead is the aspherical ball. As the load on the head is moved away from center, the effects of gravity increase. To offset the higher gravitational effect, more ball tension is needed. Conventional ballheads require correcting tension control adjustments to be made. The Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead, because of its elliptical ball, automatically adjusts to handle the off-center load. In other words, the tension automatically gets tighter as you move the load off-center. And it works as advertised. Very nice.

Continue reading at The Digital Picture

I personally don’t like ball heads that much. In theory, they seem faster, but in practise, they’re much slower for me than a 3-way tilt head. If you nail the camera position the first time, it’s faster, but how often does that happen in real life? For me, never. With a 3-way, I can get one axis right, lock it down, and move on to the next withouth screwing up the others. With a ball head, if you don’t get it perfect the first time, you have to start all over on all the axes.

Am I missing something? (Really, if there’s some way of using them that I’m not aware of, I’d like to learn it, because 3-ways are heavy and stick out.)

Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM new lens review at The Digital Picture

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Now the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM Lens enters the market. Being a prime Canon L Series Lens, the Canon 50 f/1.2 far exceeds all existing Canon 50mm lenses in nearly all aspects – including three negative ones: size, weight and price. Since Canon already has a 50mm f/1.4 lens, they would not release a slightly wider aperture version at a far higher price, size and weight without offering significantly better features and image quality. Otherwise, people simply would not buy the lens. The question is – are the actual differences enough?

Continue reading at The Digital Picture

Via PhotographyBLOG

First thoughts on Jobo 2500 daylight processing tank

Nicolai Grossman 6 Comments

I’m helping my friend Jonathan get set up to do his own black and white film processing, so I made him a shopping list. I suggested the Jobo 2500 daylight tank because it looks good on paper, and I can’t recommend my Paterson Multi-Reel 5 Tank/Super System 4 kit.

The Paterson is a plastic tank and reel system that would be great except for the little BBs that grip the film to advance the film into the reel for loading. They’re not a problem for me with 35mm, because the film is so narrow that it’s still pretty rigid. Medium format is another story, though: if there’s even the slightest bit of moisture on the BBs, they tend to jam and not release the film while you’re loading. This means that you have to take the reel apart and start all over again, sometimes making crimping the film unavoidable, which makes a nice big white mark over your photos. What’s worse is that sometimes the BBs will fuck up the edges of the film, creating a place where it will jam almost no matter what you do. Not good.

I went over to Jonathan’s the other night to show him how to load everything up and got to play with the Jobo. Its reels adjust to accommodate 35mm, 120/220, and 127 just like the Patersons do, but they don’t have the stupid film-jamming BBs! They are larger in diameter, which may a problem for people with smaller hands, but they actually just work. No jamming, no ruined frames, just easy loading. Hell yeah!

The tank itself is nice, too. It’s part of a whole system, so you can get extension tubes should you need to increase capacity at a later date, or chop it down for smaller batches.

But wait, there’s more! There aren’t many options for daylight 4×5 processing, and as I’ve written previously in this review and follow-up, the Combi-Plan 4×5 daylight tank sucks. I’ve heard good things about the Paterson Orbital processor that does four sheets at a time and uses almost no chemistry, but they’re discontinued. Having been a UK product, they’re nearly impossible to get in the US. Jobo to the rescue again—you can get reels for 4×5! I haven’t handled them yet, but the idea of having a single, good system that can handle 135 through 4×5 is extremely appealing. I’m about to order a setup for myself and will report back on the 4×5 reels once I’ve tried them.

I can’t wait to get my hands on this thing… hopefully I’ve lost my last frame to crappy reels!

Lens marks and image quality: shocking truth revealed!

Nicolai Grossman 5 Comments

How many times have you seen "small cleaning mark on lens, does not affect image quality" in ads for used cameras? Is it true? What about severe defects, like, say, "a loose spiral spring, some odd hardened liquid bubbles, dust, and a unidentified German insect in the lens"? Jurgen Kreckel, who repairs and rebuilds vintage medium format folding cameras, took such a lens—a 50/1.4 Planar—to Dresden and found out.

The results are nothing short of shocking.