So I'm back at work posting for my insatiable readers. Both of them.

My son-in-law, William, arrived from Ramadi New Year's Eve. We had Christmas with my kids and grandkids New Year's Day. It was great to see William again. Jenny says he is adjusting too well. He goes back the 14th or 15th until August.

I've been doing some testing with my Flexaret IIIa. It's definitely sharper than the Pearl River. I still want a Flexaret V but the one in this weeks eBay auction from Cupog went a little high. Now I'm short money. He has them regularly so there will be one in my future. In the meantime I picked up some more black and white filters for the Flexaret from Cupog.

With the ones that came with my Flexaret III, I have a compete set. Woo hoo!

The big score happened today. I was cruising the posts at Rangefinder Forum when I find one of the members wanted to trade a 5x7 view camera for some film. We exchanged messages during the day and agreed on 5 rolls of Fuji NPS 135-36 which, with shipping from B&H, comes to $17.90.

"The camera has a run-of-the-mill Elgeet 10" f4.5-45 lens in an alphax shutter. The shutter is probably the best thing about it as it has T and B modes as well as X and M flash sync's. The camera is in really used shape with plenty of wear and mismatched screws and the name tag fell off years ago, so I don't remember who made it."

And he is throwing in a 4x5 Graflock back without ground glass that I can use to build a 4x5 reducing back. It looks like it might be a Burke and James "tailboard" which means the rear standard does the focusing. Simple but it works.

Any 4x5s I would scan but the 5x7s I want to contact print on Azo. I swore I would never print in a darkroom again but I have always wanted to make contact prints and this might be interesting. I have a bunch of 5x7 negs I made in the 70s that would make nice contact prints, too. Another project. That's all I need.

Update: It only came to $17.15 including shipping.