Frequently asked questions

Here is a link to Frequently Asked Questions about New55.

This has been well-received and some people have offered to help with the early development of this new 4x5 material now that they understand what is involved in R&D and bringing such a product to market. There are three things that need to be done:

1. The design must be shown to be feasible
We've done this up to a point, and feel it is well enough defined and demonstrated.  Here are some examples.

2. The product must lead to or contribute to an ongoing business.
We think that is possible and have a variety of scenarios that could fulfill it.

3. There has to be an investment made to pay for labor, tooling, materials, infrastructure, and to support the steady rollout of the product that would be mass manufactured.
This is not in hand. Kickstarter would not provide this, because Kickstarter represents a preselling of a slug of materials or product, not an ongoing steady sales pattern needed to establish a going activity. Fortunately, the investment dollars are not very large and those with vision see how it may lead to other new products, technologies, and the ability to license or sell into new and growing fields.

Please read the FAQ

lively black and white

Dmax will never be the same

Just for fun, here is a link to my work on UBA tm, the Ultra Black Absorber. Its use is primarily in optics, in optical receivers, and for solar thermal systems.

it looks like this, from here



to here.

Too much goop or not enough seal

Fine tuning amounts and how we put things together have unexpected results, witness this diptych by Nafis Azad, who wrestles with 20x24 camera by day, and even has his own 30x30 camera. The miniature format of mere 4x5 is no problem to Nafis.

A happy accident as some of the reagent pulled away from the face, or is there some visual intelligence within the DTR process itself?

We need to get some tools to seal the pods so they travel well. Right now the pods do open on their own too easily, but that could be corrected with a new heating and sealing tool. The many successful New55 FILM examples to date have all been hand-assembled by Jack Willard, so we know we are close to a good design, but once we scale up, (assuming we do) we will have to have some custom built machinery.

Too much solarization

After one minute of processing, New55 produced this surreal headshot with surrounding reversal and other oddities. It is amazing, however, that the effect can be so selective and controllable. In fact this was the inspiration for the photograph of the model and camera showing the camera reversed, but the model nearly normal in presentation. That one is in the slide show. I have several of these "too weird" examples that  in retrospect appear to be at least fun to see. On the left is the edge of goop, the limit of reagent spread. Just enough is used to cover the entire area or in this instance, not quite enough. But close.

Collodion tintype

I've been looking through Youtube searching alternative photography and find there are hundreds of posts about tintypes, transfers, collodion, Daguerreotypes, and much more. This one caught my eye though, as it looks pretty easy to do and a lot of fun. I doubt you really have to make a mess like this one shows to be successful, but it may be inevitable. Here is a link to more on collodion, including some big ones. Another site, Scully and Osterman, I've pointed to in the past and is quite relevant here.

je ne parle pas bien francais...

I greatly appreciate the enthusiasm for New55 in France

Les ventes ne peuvent pas commencer avant 8 mois après le financement est disponible. Le financement n'est pas ici aujourd'hui. Il pourrait être obtenu quelque temps dans l'avenir, et nous essayons de le faire. Mais, il faut savoir qu'il n'est pas encore fait, et donc les huit mois seulement après le financement, après l'argent est garanti.

New55 Examples

10X enlargement of corner of New55 

Here is a link to a slideshow of photographs taken with New55 FILM.  There is some additional content that is available to Flickr accounts, so you may want to sign up. Also, the slide show can be slowed down, and the captions can be displayed as the show plays. I cannot set it to do that from here, but you can while it is playing.

Some of the photographs are from the scanned in New55 negative, and a few are the corresponding positive print. A couple of the examples show both the positive and the negative.

Here is the link click here