>Fortunately I've found a small independent one-hour lab operated by a guy who treats my film as if it were his own, and who takes good care of his
equipment, but it's not the dip-and-dunk I could get two years ago. Another sign is the crash in value of processing gear. I bought a Jobo CPP with lift, three tanks, 11 35mm reels and 3 4x5 reels on the weekend at a camera fair for around US$280. Only one other guy had expressed interest. To buy that stuff here new would cost ten times as much. It's ironic that a couple of weeks after buying the *ist D I should be buying a film processor, but I have really enjoyed playing with monochrome 4x5 and would like to try colour. With the lift I should be able to do E6 and then I can scan that on the 2450. So long as the E6 kits are still available I will be happily self sufficient. I'm also accumulating flash bulbs when I can get them cheaply, for use with the Speed-Graphic. There is a bit of work to be done there to understand the effects of using small bulbs with large reflectors. Unfortunately the proper screw base bulbs are hard to come by here and are usually too expensive to import once you take postage into account. There are plenty of M2, M3 and PF5s still around, so I'll have to make do. I'm not sure whether a flash meter will measure the light correctly as the duration of the bulb is a lot longer and thus the cumulative amount of light in a 1/60 exposure could be greater even though a strobe has a much greater peak output. Paul Ewins Melbourne, Australia
