Graflex Digital Back Part III

Even with problems, I love most of the images I’m getting with, what I’m calling, the “Digi-tiler”, or Digital Tiler.  Especially this one of Marilyn (who was passing by my office on the way to the market).

Instead of holding the Digitiler to the camera with velcro and wires I’ve been able to construct a Graflok back that slides on and off the camera.   Like everything, it still needs improvement.  After more than 30 firing mechanisms, I’m finally getting results where I don’t miss a shot, or take a double.  I tried various ratchets for the horizontal placement.  None have been better than a simple lock-bar.

I went out to Massachusetts Ave to take a shot with some detail.  Final crop 23,171 x 14,573 pixels, or 338MP.

Go to my Flickr Graflex images to download any image in its original size.

I took the same shot with a Sony 24mp Sony A6000 with 35mm/1.8.  Here are blow-ups

Here’s the backside of where I’m at with the Digitiler

I’m hoping after a few weeks of use I can get it reliable enough for other photographers to use it, should anyone have an interest.

Steve Hopf of Hopf Ground Glass has kindly offered to sell me some cheap factory-second ground glass so I can start building viewers for the camera.  Although I have the Graflok viewer mounted, it’s so heavy and unwieldy, I rarely bother with it.  Thanks Steve!

I tried to get an unlimited trial-use of Piccure+ for testing, but wasn’t successful.  The software is interesting in that it doesn’t use lens profiles for sharpening.  Since compiled images from a large format camera are synthetic, such software could be useful for high-end sharpness.  However, sharpening is complete over-kill at the moment!  These images already blow up FastStone (which I love) and hit PhotoShop’s 2 gig file size limit.

For now, I’m still getting stitching problems which I have to solve (though they’re getting fewer).

While waiting for parts I created a quick-and-dirty medium format Digitiler with an old Zenza Bronica.  I constructed a box out of foamboard for the Nikkor P 75mm/2.8.  Here is an image of my daughter.

At some point I’m going to make some digitilers using some projector lenses I have lying around.