JOBO verses Stainless Steel

If your SS leak, you have mismatched reels & tanks. Try matching up your set, then marking them.. I have a dozen over 50 years now. None leak.

The loader pictured is junk. the ones where you slide in and push the outer wrap to center are fine. There are revised design.

Jobo expert drum for 4x5 is the way to go when using Jobo.

Jobo is obsolete and parts are a problem although I heard it is restarting.

Nikkor SS and hangars for 4x5. Buy a special order hangar rack from Arkay. One item to lift and dunk.

Ronald,

My tanks I bought new from B&H and they came with plastic lids that leak, and are not mismatched. Leak might be an exaggeration, but basically they dribble.

From what I am seeing the JOBO expert system is really great for 4x5.

I also saw that ARKAY rack you mentioned for dip and dunk 4x5. Looks like the way to go if one has a darkroom.

Cal
 
I have this:

Basket Line by Nokton48, on Flickr

24 rolls of 120 in a 3.5 gallon Kodak Rubber tank. I have everything, even the wash tank. When I build my dream darkroom this is goin' in. Jobo until then and way beyond.

Dan,

Ever since I got that dip and dunk rack I have been kinda obsessed with how crazy using it will be. I figured that with the incoming supersized tank and 8 reels I will be able to fill my rack with 18 120 reels with one to spare, and then I have 4 220 Hewes reels and 8 135 Hewes reels as extra.

Also figured out I have enough empty tanks to use as film safes for loaded reels, and enough to fill my rack.

Now all I need are those 3 1/2 gallon Kodak hard rubber tanks.

"Crazy is good," I say. LOL. Mark Cuban said, "Go big: or don't go."

Cal
 
For decades, I have used stainless steel for developing 35mm and 120mm color and black & white roll film.

I have never used JOBO; therefore, cannot comment on it.


35mm and 120 Developing by Narsuitus, on Flickr

UPDATE:

I was able to secure a 6 120 reel Nikor stainless steel tank like the one above. There is likely enough room on top of 6 120 reels to fit a 135 reel.

Tank came with a 1 liter Nikor tank as well and 8 120 reels.

The dip and dunk rack I mentioned above in another post is full with 18 120 reels with a spare, and I still have 4 220 Hewes reels and 8 135 Hewes reels.

In another thread I also bought a 645 and a 6x7 Linhof CINE backs to shoot 70mm. I just secured three SS reels that can handle 15 feet of film so I basically shoot a baby Linhof like a Leica. 60+ exposures of 6x7 with 15 feet of film, and 120+ exposures 645 with 15 feet of film.

Cal
 
UPDATE:

I was able to secure a 6 120 reel Nikor stainless steel tank like the one above. There is likely enough room on top of 6 120 reels to fit a 135 reel.

Tank came with a 1 liter Nikor tank as well and 8 120 reels.

The dip and dunk rack I mentioned above in another post is full with 18 120 reels with a spare, and I still have 4 220 Hewes reels and 8 135 Hewes reels.

In another thread I also bought a 645 and a 6x7 Linhof CINE backs to shoot 70mm. I just secured three SS reels that can handle 15 feet of film so I basically shoot a baby Linhof like a Leica. 60+ exposures of 6x7 with 15 feet of film, and 120+ exposures 645 with 15 feet of film.

Cal
I thought you lived in a small one bedroom apartment. Do you have a storage locker somewhere for all of your cameras and ancillary equipment, which seem to be growing exponentially? :)
 
I thought you lived in a small one bedroom apartment. Do you have a storage locker somewhere for all of your cameras and ancillary equipment, which seem to be growing exponentially? :)

PTP,

The apartment is only 650 square feet, and yes it is only a one bedroom.

I keep all my cameras at hand because I use them. Also know that I print and also have an Epson 7800 and Epson 3880 as my small printer with an 27 inch Eizo at hand.

The only photographic equipment I have in public storage is a complete wet darkroom, a few Domke bags of unused gear, and a bunch of empty Leica boxes.

At 59 1/2 I'm thinking about quitting the day job and really doing only what I want to do, and part of that is having a darkroom, wet printing, and pretty much dealing with all these negatives I created previously without any regard to printing. In my case time will be a great editor, know for mucho time all I concentrated on was image capture when film was inexpensive, and I could afford to shoot on average 150 rolls a month for 7-8 months and process 150 rolls a month in my kitchen.

Crazy is good I say.

Cal

POSTSCRIPT: I failed to mention that my gal and I decided to seriously downsize as a way to move towards retirement. That is how we justified moving into Madhattan. Previously we were just Hill Billies from Brooklyn and Queens. LOL. As we age we accumulated so much stuff we no longer needed that we were just saving. I discovered all these cloths I saved to wear work ing on cars and trucks that did not make sense anymore because I don't own a car. I saved stuff that I found that might be usefull if I had a farm in Vermont, but that dream today is unlikely. I was once blamed for single handedly down sizing a major aerospace company because I had all these military aircraft parts and hardware...
 
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This thread inspired me to take my Hewes 120 reels and Semigon tank out for some action. I am a life long Paterson user but bought the stainless kit years ago but could not remember why I never took to it. Anyway I loaded two 120 reels which was easier to do than to load Paterson reels. When I poured the developer into the Semigon tank it seemingly took ages before I was able to fill the 1 litre tank whereas I could fill the Paterson tank in maybe a second. The slow filling was probably the reason why I never took to SS tanks. Is there a brand with a faster light trap in the cap or I shouldn't worry about taking 10 seconds to fill a 1 litre tank?
 
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