I photograph artwork using a 4x5 sinar, and would like to be able to input information onto the film, using some sort of large format "data back".I was thinking of a miniature led display inside the rear standard able to project onto the film plane,driven by a keyboard device.The effect would hopefully be similar to the edge marking for batch numbers used by the film manufacturer,and enable me to positively identify an object with an alphanumeric sequence,perhaps even direct from an existing database.Any ideas for this project? I would prefer to input in camera rather than prior to loading the film,and I know it will be easy with digital but that's a still a few years off for me yet. Many thanks from a newcomer to this form of communication.

-- raymond g fulton (rayfulton@qcc.qld.gov.au), March 31, 1998

Answers

I don't have any experience with this sort of thing, but I would think that any LED device or similar light source would have to be actually in contact with the film. Since the source would not be projected through a lens, I think you would just get a blur if its any distance away from the film. I would think that you'd also have to experiment a bit to find the proper exposure, but if the source is of constant brightness, once you've found the right exposure it should work as long as you stick with the same film.

-- Rob Rothman (rrothman@riag.com), March 31, 1998.

I believe that Sinar, or a third party manufacture makes a back that you write your info on special strip of acetate, which is then slipped into a channel in the camera back, this puts your info onto the negative corner when the exposure is made. Two drawbacks of this back that I can see are, first if the density of your corner area is low, or you are shooting at night there won't be enough light to expose the data, second if your hand writing is poor, well......

For the cost of something digital to do this, you could probably buy a second Sinar....

If you were to make the device yourself, the shielding and baffling of the LCD to protect the film from blooming would have to be pretty precise. Edmund Scientific sells the raw LCD devices in a variety of sizes, and voltages....

Good Luck

-- Britt Leckman (bleckman@gmu.edu), April 01, 1998.