I would like to try rotary proccessing multiple B&W 4x5 and maybe an 8x10 or two and have just found a nice beselor motor base but the beselor color drum that came with it looks to be an 11x14 size and mounted inside the drum,running the length of it, there appears to be a trough like piece of plastic, Im new to this so how is this tube used for film? It would only fit one 8x10 and I have no idea how multiple 4x5s would fit and stay in place. The Jobo expert drums are pricey but well regarded but for 4x5, can they really be that much better than any of the lower priced drums? A lot of people on this forum like the unicolor drums (which I have never seen) but is this because of the price issue? What drum or drums should I look out for? Any opinions would be appreciated, thanks.

-- bill zelinski (willy226@yahoo.com), May 09, 2000

Answers

I prefer the Unicolor drums because they have little ribs which hold the film away from the walls, thereby allowing the chemistry to get behind the film. The trough is to hold the chemistry before you start turning the drum on the base i.e., put the film or paper in the drum, close it and pour the chemistry in through the spout. The chemistry pools into the trough inside the drum and once you start the motor, the entire film gets more or less evenly wet. Regarding putting more than one 4x5 film into the 8x10 drum, there is a ridge on the top of the Unicolor drum so that the sheet of 4x5 film is held between the ridge on the trough and the ridge on top (opposite the trough). So you can load 2 sheets on either side of the drum and if you could find some way to keep the sheets separate and prevent their overlapping during the rotation, you can load 2 on each side. Hope this helps. DJ

-- N Dhananjay (ndhanu@umich.edu), May 09, 2000.

I use the Unicolor 8x10 drum and cut a stick the length of the diameter of the drum that slides down on top of the first 4x5 sheets in the drum. Then I slide two more sheets on top of this stick. This keeps the sheets separated. It works beautifully. Rich tonal detail. I use the drum unless I have a lot of the same emulsions at the same times to make it worthwhile to use my tanks. I just returned from a trip to the 4 corners region of the southwest where I photographed Anasazi Ruins. I used 5 different emulsions and have everything from N+2 to N-3 to process. So far I like what I see. I thank John Sexton and Stephen Burns for turning me on to rotory processing. It has made a difference in my negs. James

-- james (james_mickelson@hotmail.com), May 18, 2000.

Thanks, one last dumb question, as my tank has nothing written on it and the size measures more like 11x14, how do I tell if this is in fact an 8X10 tank or not? Did they make a lot of different sizes?

-- bill zelinski (willy226@yahoo.com), May 18, 2000.

The 11x14 tank measures 11x14 and there is a 16x20 also. James

-- james (james_mickelson@hotmail.com), May 20, 2000.