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Antique 4x5 camera creates 20 micron photolithography masks [video]
- itgoon 7y agoApplied Science is one of my favorite YouTube channels.
- canada_dry 7y agoBen Krasnow (a Googler by day) has one of the most incredibly interesting channels on youtube - and accompanying blog [1]. The effortless way he is able to describe complex processes and techniques used in his experiments borders on being Feynman like. [1] https://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/ https://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/
- ddingus 7y agoI agree. He's a treasure, and I've learned so much. And learned it fairly easily.
- madaxe_again 7y agoI used to travel with a crown graphic - pretty much the same camera as in the video, shooting colour positive. You can do some great stuff with them, and tilt-shift is trivial, if that’s your thing. Quality on slow film is just crazy - I’ve a shot of an ex, she’s half-frame, and you can see the second hand on her watch - you can get very fine focus with a loupe, and having a Polaroid back to do some instant tests was a godsend - but you can’t get the film for it any more. I have no idea where he’s finding film so cheap - I stopped when it was costing me £5 per exposure. It also folded up into a very neat little box, which is irresistible to children - sadly one was handed it by a friend, who promptly destroyed it.
- Palomides 7y agoI literally just bought a box of the film he's using here, it's a high contrast red-insensitive film, $15 for 50 sheets, https://www.freestylephoto.biz/531345-Arista-Ortho-Litho-Film-3.0-3.9x4.9-50-Sheets-For-4x5-Film-Holders https://www.freestylephoto.biz/531345-Arista-Ortho-Litho-Fil... developing it for normal contrast images is more difficult but not impossible
- staticautomatic 7y agoI've shot a ton of Kodak Ortho film in 4x5 at EI 3, 6, and 12. It's actually super easy to develop. I recommend stand development in 1:100 HC-110 with occasional agitation. The developer basically exhausts after 10 or 12 minutes depending on the temperature, which happens to be pretty much exactly the right development time, so it's pretty much impossible to over-develop.
- tecleandor 7y agoSeems similar to xray ortho film, green or blue sensitive, and is pretty cheap.
- mmcwilliams 7y agoGreatly reduced Rodinal, on the order of 1:100, will bring some "normal" tones out of hi-con film. At $0.30 a sheet it's not a bad experiment. I was gifted a roll of expired Kodak Imagelink microfilm stock and once it's cut down to sheets that's my development plan for it. Similar tonal range and ISO.
- staticautomatic 7y agoFor color, I think it really depends on your willingness to use expired film. I've shot mostly expired film for about 15 years, and once you've tried a range of emulsions of various ages and provenance, it's not hard to figure out how what's going to perform well under what conditions. Even 20 year old color neg performs pretty well with only modest overexposure. B&W you can still get down to about $1/sheet if you're willing to shoot Arista.
- lokl 7y agoIf you want cheap film for large format, shoot x-ray film.
- paulmd 7y agoImpossible Project has brought back peel-apart 8x10 polaroid film. Currently $18 a shot, so not for the faint of wallet, but perhaps they will bring back 4x5 someday as well.
- ngcc_hk 7y agoExpensive roller to “develop” it though.
- poooogles 7y ago>I have no idea where he’s finding film so cheap - I stopped when it was costing me £5 per exposure. Ilford is £1.50 a shot + chemicals. Rodinal is pretty cheap and if you're printing then the fixer cost is negligible.
- foldr 7y agoOP mentioned color positive film, which can go for around £5 a sheet.
- piffey 7y agoThere are still photographers shooting 4x5 in DC professionally with the press core. One is David Burnett and the other I can't remember off hand, but he's been shooting 4x5 of the congressional hearings. You just can't beat the quality of large format. With Kodak releasing Ektachrome in 4x5 this last January I've been shooting more and more of it. It's expensive for chromes, but shooting HP5 sheets is pretty cheap for the quality of the output in the end.
- foldr 7y agoAre you sure you mean a Crown Graphic? A Crown Graphic is about as different as it's possible to be from the camera in the video while still being a 4x5 camera (https://vintagecameralab.com/wp-content/uploads/graflex-crown-graphic_011.jpg https://vintagecameralab.com/wp-content/uploads/graflex-crow...). It also doesn't make tilt-shift movements as easy as you're suggesting.
- Finnucane 7y agoThe camera in the video is a Graflex Graphic View, so made by the same manufacturer, but yeah, totally different in use. A Crown does not have the same level of movements. But they [Graphic Views] are relative bargains for view cameras if you can find one in decent shape.
- klodolph 7y agoGoing to admit that I only scanned through the video. More so than in smaller formats, B&W is cheaper. Older style emulsions (cubic grain) are also cheaper than newer style (tabular / shell / whatever). Litho film is cheaper still. B&W is USD$1-$3 per shot in 4x5, and if you process yourself you’re only paying for your own time and consumables. Newer styles like Delta, T-Max go for $2-$3. Older styles like HP5, FP4, Tri-X go for $1.50-$2.50. Budget lines like Arista can be found around $1/sheet. Ortho litho (what is being used in the video) has always been dirt cheap by comparison. It’s like $0.30 per sheet. Basically, all of the technical innovation that has gone into modern film is simply not used in ortho litho. You just need high contrast and resolution, that’s it. So you don’t need complicated sensitizing dyes or anything of that sort.
- cculpepper 7y agoBen's interview on The Amp Hour [0] is pretty great as well. Awesome person, amazingly the same in person as in his video persona. [0] https://theamphour.com/480-an-interview-with-ben-krasnow-8-years-on/ https://theamphour.com/480-an-interview-with-ben-krasnow-8-y...
- splintercell 7y agoCringing it everytime he calls it an antique camera. This is like a millennial talking about an antique technology called 'VHS' tape.
- ginko 7y agoI sorta agree. For me anything made after WWII isn't really antique. "Vintage" maybe. That Graphic View II he used was manufactured until 1967 and likely used professionally for many decades after.
- ipsum2 7y agoDefinition of antique: > An antique is usually an item that is collected or desirable because of its age, beauty, rarity, condition, utility, personal emotional connection, and/or other unique features. It is an object that represents a previous era or time period in human history. Seems fitting to me.
- foldr 7y agoThe camera in the video doesn't meet any of these descriptions. Metal construction 4x5 monorails are ten a penny and are still manufactured today. This model probably dates from the 50s-60s. You can pick up something like this for very little money: https://www.ebay.com/itm/324084661177 https://www.ebay.com/itm/324084661177 The price of the item above corresponds to its actual utility as a camera. No-one is collecting these.
- tasty_freeze 7y agoGo to craigslist (for a large city) or ebay and search "vintage computer". Stuff produced in the 90s is considered vintage.
- ginko 7y agoThis is a camera, not a computer. This monorail 4x5 camera is pretty much still the state of the art for studio large format photography.
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- chongli 7y agoThis is so cool! Questions for engineers: How much work would it take to go from this process to producing a working chip in his garage, like a 6502 or something? Would it be at all feasible? He did point out a ton of defects in the final product, probably due to dust or scratches in his equipment/materials. Would it be possible to clean this up enough to get 1-2 usable chips from a single sheet of 4x5 film? Without turning his garage into a clean room?
- bane 7y agoI can't answer most of this since I don't know, but the first 6502 was fabricated at 8 microns. I wonder if a chip made at 15-20 microns would work just as well?
- korethr 7y agoI don't see why not it wouldn't work, assuming you got the process right and produced them in a clean enough environment. Yields would probably be lower than that of a professional foundary during the 60s or 70s that was processing at the same feature size. Performance of your DIY 6502 would probably be lower as well -- requiring more power and producing more waste heat to run at a lower clock rate than that of an original. So would it work? Possibly. Work as well? Less likely. All IMO, of course.
- Cerium 7y agoHere is a blog on home IC production: http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/ http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/ Having done some work in a university lab, I have no desire to be involved in silicon work in a home environment. It requires dangerous chemicals, and lots of equipment and dedication. A short list of what I remember: - Spin coater - Some solution of exposure of masks - Various chemical baths (HH, piranha, etc) in a dedicated area. - Inspection microscope - Tube oven - Vapor deposition - A way to measure film thickness
- chongli 7y agoI wonder if at some point we'll develop new materials and techniques that make it easier to do this, with safer chemicals and less equipment. It may seem far-fetched but you never know. When I was a kid I would've thought it pretty far-fetched that people could 3D print ventilator valves at home that are actually saving lives during a pandemic.
- bane 7y agoOne of my coworkers did his dissertation on photolithography, I grew up in a family printing shop and we followed a remarkably similar process to generate the metal offset plates that were used in the presses. It turns out that the processes are so similar that my colleague and I often frequently remark about it during idle chit-chat. There's pitifully few good explanation videos about the printing version of this process, but here's a quick video (in Chinese, but if you watch the OP's video this one should be easy to follow) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KENIyBWNhyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KENIyBWNhyk The process in the printing industry has gotten very refined as well: you can go directly from a digital image file to a plate in one entirely automated step: https://youtu.be/mA8Dnp0rp3Y https://youtu.be/mA8Dnp0rp3Y https://youtu.be/TeJ_STTfBsI https://youtu.be/TeJ_STTfBsI
- bkraz 7y agoHi. I'm the creator of this video. Let me know if you have any questions.
- GaryNumanVevo 7y agoJust wanted to say thanks for all the amazing work you put up online. It’s great to see all the science one can do in a spare garage.
- angel_j 7y agoCan you do videolithography next? Soft circuits of some kind. Then we can use machine learning to generate purposeful circuits—with CNNs, GANs, etc.
- IIAOPSW 7y agoOh there will be NN coming out of this project...in a manner of speaking.
- IIAOPSW 7y agoI've been following you since you made your own aerogel. Now that you're working with thought emporium, are you worried you might one day be replaced with headcheese?
- arriu 7y agoI love your passion and drive towards making things work. Often without a blueprint to follow. Thanks for shining light (sometimes literally) on so many obscure topics. If you ever find yourself bored, we could really use a reliable method of removing a camera senor bayer matrix. Bonus points if you can figure out how to deposit microlenses back onto the photosites after removal. https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/166334-debayering-a-dslrs-bayer-matrix/ https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/166334-debayering-a-dslrs...
- bane 7y agoAwesome video and process, we've been talking about this at work since it showed up here and have a few questions if you don't mind: How far do you think you'd be from making a simple 8-bit CPU like a 6502? Have you thought about illuminating the initial film exposure as well as the substrate exposure (on the slide glass) using monochromatic light sources like a mercury UV lamp? Instead of a vacuum pump to flatten the film during exposure, how about electrostatic charges?