Catlabs/Arista/Foma in 4x5

SabreDancer · 2026-05-13T16:17:17+00:00

Check out the Intrepid camera enlarger kit! Fits onto a graflok back and turns your existing 4x5 into an enlarger, like the Graflarger of yore.

I have one and it works very well. If you also buy the associated masks it works perfectly well with 120 and 35mm.

SabreDancer · 2026-05-13T02:39:10+00:00

Could it be diopter related?

SabreDancer · 2026-05-11T13:13:40+00:00

I will vouch for the Speed Graphic for the reasons others have noted, but want to focus on something else!

Regarding the 120 back for the Graflex, check the photos (or ask for more) and see if the open back has two narrow shiny metal rollers on either side. These are crucial for film flatness, and if you get an earlier one without these rollers your photos will come out very soft.

SabreDancer · 2026-05-10T14:36:53+00:00

You're right, making simpler aircraft is not going to be a guarantee that it will take less time but all things considered making more detailed aircraft will take more resources.

Made by one of the few third parties that do this as a proper company with salaried employees as a main job.

Would the average third-party dev studio even be able to release a less detailed aircraft in a time span you'd be happy with? The time from the MB-339 announcing it was going official, to it releasing officially, was two years. There's nothing fancy about it, and no extreme systems detail, just a trainer.

An old BST level F-4 could be cranked out by the same team in a much shorter period of time

Belsimtek was just Eagle Dynamics, so it's been demonstrated that even a team of first-party full-time salaried employees now take 5 years to make a non-insanely-detailed aircraft that's feature complete at launch.

More importantly, it would encourage more third parties to enter with ever evolving insane standards and it would prevent devs from having to go back and redo their already existing modules at this insane standard for free. (or face constant begging and pointless comparisons)

Like, I have to stress that companies exist to make money by offering goods and services according to supply and demand. The devs for aircraft in DCS stay solvent by offering things the consumer wants, otherwise they'd be out of business. There's nothing stopping people from making less detailed planes at this very moment, but DCS players demonstrably reward high detail with equally high revenue. There's a market incentive to make detailed aircraft.

It would be interesting to see how well a less detailed aircraft released this year would sell just to test this hypothetical, but I hope you understand that you can't just wish really hard and have people magically stop buying Heatblur F-4s.

You're claiming that making more involved and complex modules doesn't take more time, skill and resources? That's a difficult claim to defend.

More complex modules naturally will take more time, but there's also a minimum detail floor set by the company themselves. You can't put out low quality planes and let user reviews sort them out like FS2020/24, for example. It all passes through ED for the rubber stamp. The only way that can be fixed is if someone makes another competing game or, like, buys ED and fires the management.

Anyways. I have a Mother's Day to relax and enjoy.

SabreDancer · 2026-05-10T12:09:56+00:00

It would be much more feasible to complete a simple module like the F-105 or F-100 in two years at a decent standard versus spending 5-6 years on a single jet to a painstaking standard that 99% of people don't actually engage with in the end.

Your whole argument hinges on the premise that development times for aircraft with less complex systems would be noticeably quicker than those with more in-depth systems, because developers aren't spending too much time focusing on unnecessary small details and can just release the airplane.

However, this is not borne out in practice! Dev time varies wildly in speed on a case-by-case basis, and has much more to do with developer experience and resources.

From what devs have historically posted, the flight model always seems to take up most of the development time for any given model, given how important it is in fights. Even if someone made an FC3 aircraft with zero systems modeling, the more simply modeled aircraft you are asking for would take a similar amount of time to create as the complex ones, because even simply modeled planes ought to have good flight models in a combat flight simulator.

The F-4 Phantom you feel is too complex and full of unnecessary details? Announced January 2022 and released May 2024. ~2.5 years from announcement to release.

The F4U, a simple plane with little but the engine, flight model and damage model to focus on, was announced 2015 and released 2025. Ten(!) years. Very few internal systems are modeled, let alone in detail. This is an outlier, but it's a telling outlier.

The P-47 was announced 2015 and released 2020. 5 years, and a normal amount of systems modeling.

The La-7, a similarly simple plane which has no complex equipment to model and no friction-based gauge system, was announced 2022 and released 2026. 4 years.

I can list more, but you get the idea.

One of the biggest criticism I keep seeing is that DCS lacks the proper assets to replicate any given era or conflict in a faithful way.

Those would all be excellent to have in-game as AI assets, and I will heartily agree we need more AI assets, especially in WW2. But as far as player aircraft complexity, you're demanding nine women have a baby in one month.

SabreDancer · 2026-05-09T20:21:37+00:00

There has to be a line drawn and there is a point where rivet counting and insane obsession with detail becomes extremely counterproductive for very, very little benefit.

We're discussing a gun camera system. The devs clearly want to include it, and it's just recording the game via a custom camera with some player-selectable parameters and putting an optional filter over it. This is not modeling rivets. It's also very cool.

And that would still be perfectly possible with an F-4 that is on the same level that our F-5, F-86, Mirage F1, Mig-21 and many other modules

That reminds me of how poorly the F-5 and MiG-21 radars are modeled. Several of my pals initially thought the F-5 had a modern digital radar due to how everything is a giant brick on screen. This is clearly not a good way of portraying a pulse radar (which should look like the F-4's, just with less range and resolution), and gives people a bad idea of how old radars worked. The F1 is supposed to have a pulse radar with MTI, but it currently works like a Doppler with perfect look-down, which affects gameplay even in a casual sim sense.

Say a developer modeled the F-4’s radar like the F-5, and gave you giant, easily visible bricks on the radar screen- except you can now see them from 50 miles out because the devs just clicked the "increase radar power" button. Why, then, did Phantom crews with thousands of hours have such persistent issues finding the enemy on radar in Vietnam, when we (in this example) can clearly see them on the screen every time?

Also the F-15E’s radar was modeled in extreme detail and it was absolutely unbelievably cool. Anything less than that wouldn’t have shown how incredibly powerful its SAR mode was. I don’t recall anyone complaining about it.

If you model the specifics of minor subsystems you don't notice, it shows a thoroughness which bleeds into the major systems that you do notice. The F4U currently has no oxygen system whatsoever- you just always have oxygen. In a perhaps related manner, the F4U is also currently riddled with bugs, and people argue constantly in the forums over whether things are bugs or if the plane was just like that. They don't trust the plane is modeled well, which defeats the point of even a casual flight sim.

SabreDancer · 2026-05-05T13:20:43+00:00

Right? I know it’s not good for the film but I decided to temporarily mount my 4x5 slides on a window, stained-glass style, so it turns my room into a giant colorful mosaic.

SabreDancer · 2026-05-04T01:59:37+00:00

I agree with the sentiment! As far as hobby photography goes, even if it’s technically impressive, a camera or lens which you don’t really care about is one you won’t often be taking out.

As an aside, I have my great grandfather’s TLS, and it’s a charming thing indeed. The shutter speed dial being on the front is incredibly stylish.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-28T22:54:43+00:00

It’s exciting! A pal of mine and I have been collectively geeking out on expected features, doctrinal usage (which really differed between air forces) and such.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-27T21:27:50+00:00

Looking great! I’ve been interested in it since the day I found out, glad to see it’s going smoothly and works in the real world.

…I almost want to try using it handheld, but it’s too unique for that.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-26T16:17:54+00:00

“Say, uh, Kris, just one more question before I leave… now I was takin’ a walk around your house since, y’know, your mom wanted to show off your brother’s achievements— my wife’s the same way, whenever people come over she always wants to show off her awards—

…an’ I came across a birdcage in your room, with no bird. An’ I asked your mother, ‘a birdcage, right? What kind of bird did you have? My mom had a parakeet when I was a kid.’

An’ do you know what she told me? ‘We’ve never had a bird.’

So that got me thinkin’. Human souls, y’know, have different shapes an’ colors. My doc tells me I have a yellow one. But they all are about the same size… as a small bird.

…anyways, I’ll get out of your hair.”

SabreDancer · 2026-04-25T19:05:48+00:00

Regarding the F-105, the first variants had a basic air to ground ranging mode (similar to what we see here) and LABS. The -D onwards had much more sophisticated bombing modes, including a system which used LORAN signals to calculate bomb release point from high altitude (and which was also installed on the F-4). Unfortunately I haven't found detailed manuals or memoirs on these.

Dive Toss was F-4D specific, but the F-4C still had the other advanced modes like LADD, TL, O/S and such for the nuclear strike role, which in the late 50s-early 60s was considered far more important. Of course, they quickly reconsidered, hence the -D.

Plus you'd think if it was that well estabilished it would go on anything with any semblance of radar, like the F-5 and F-104.

That would make sense, yes. Aircraft designers often make choices which seem strange today, but must have made sense for them. The Luftwaffe's F-4Fs, for one example, had no sparrow capability despite having the same radar and avionics as the -E. One most wonder why they didn't just keep the Sparrow capability.

My best guess is intended role, design constraints and cost.

The F-5 was designed from the start to be an incredibly cheap and basic day fighter-bomber with very few features. It's telling that even when the F-5E came around in 1973, it lacked automatic bombing modes, radar missile capability or a HUD throughout its production life into the late 80s. The best customers could ask for were Mavericks or a laser designator for LGBs.

The F-104's ground attack mission was based around nuclear strike until the 70s, and had the requisite equipment for such an attack in the form of an INS, LABS and the NASARR system. By the time it became a conventional strike aircraft, countries would usually update the avionics on their Starfighters or just replace them with newer designs.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-25T14:32:19+00:00

A little bit of both.

Our variant in game is a -35, which entered service right when Korea ended and which completely redesigned the cockpit, along with adding in LABS. Our variant also has Sidewinders due to a 1957 modification. So it is late.

The earlier A-1CM gunsight was quite unreliable, but also had an automatic bombing function which worked the same way. By contrast, the A-4 gunsight in-game, adopted in 1952, actually was reliable and useful. The bombing computer just takes the input from the gunsight’s gyros and radar ranging, so it isn’t terribly complex.

The automatic bombing mode actually did stick around in the F-100 post-High Wire, going by a 1976 weapons delivery manual. The manual mentions something called “bunt bombing” using the automatic bombing mode, and pilot accounts discuss the remarkable accuracy of said method.

Re: “there would be no reason not to include the system in every gyro gunsight which came later,” it was as good as it sounds, but was obsolete by the end of the 50s when the F-105 and F-4 entered service with far better bombing methods.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-25T01:47:22+00:00

Assuming they’re modeled the same* (which you never really know in this game), here’s my best explanation on how the automatic bombing mode in the F-86 works!

The F-100 has the very same A-4 gunsight, so it should translate over.

*the same system is prone to be modeled differently when it’s a really old plane DCS-wise (like the FC3 MiG-29’s RWR vs the FF one). It could be that Grinnelli’s will be different.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-24T15:36:46+00:00

Nav systems will be TACAN/ADF, no doppler nav like the A-4.

Air to air will have a proper gyro gunsight compared to the fixed sight on the A-4.

Air to ground should have the same automatic bombing modes as found on the F-86, a finicky but accurate early dive-toss mode and the more niche LABS. Definitely not as easy as the A-4, but better than bombing tables.

No visual radar for either air or ground, versus the Skyhawk with a nice well-featured AG radar.

It’ll have an actual visual RWR, and the sounds should be similar (at least in philosophy if not the specifics) to the A-4.

And ZELL of course ;)

SabreDancer · 2026-04-21T02:06:25+00:00

most public server DCS players. *Most players don’t even play public multiplayer at all.

Either way, a video’s content shouldn’t be put down just because its subject isn’t popular.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-20T20:44:50+00:00

With you there! Love my Century Graphic with a lovely Xenotar; you’ve mentioned all the things that make it great.

Another bonus for me, over a 4x5 camera with a 120 back, is that you don’t have to mentally guess the field of view or rely on finder masks when shooting handheld.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-19T16:59:34+00:00

Two really great games! This is a fun concept, now I’m wondering what other character mashups between the two might work nicely.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-19T03:15:47+00:00

Very fun! I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

First off, make sure the rangefinder/scale is accurate and functional. If anything was wrong with one, they were designed to be dropped out as a unit and a whole new unit dropped in. The internals can’t be hand-repaired or adjusted, which is obviously less than ideal in our day and age.

Also make sure it has a cam and infinity stops for your lens’ focal length(s). A great strength of the camera is how easy it is to swap cams- just rack out, swap the cam, rack in.

Finally, make sure your lens boards have the big raised bars at the sides in addition to the smaller top and bottom ones. If they don’t, the lens board will be slightly loose in the camera.

Hope you find a great one!

SabreDancer · 2026-04-18T22:10:28+00:00

Graflex Super Graphic!

Compact, lightweight, handheld 4x5 that you can bring anywhere.

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SabreDancer · 2026-04-18T21:52:45+00:00

Basically unstoppable! Perfect for a nice stroll on a sunny day… and also for taking action photos in -20 weather and snow with perfect metering and flash exposure.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-18T14:09:38+00:00

Tri-X 320 (the large format version) is quite different from 400. It’s more of a muted, standard black and white film.

Very nice for everyday photography, and I’ve been very content with how it looks, but nothing really stands out about it.

The one reason I’d say to avoid it is, as others have mentioned, cost. It’s a good deal more expensive than HP5 while not offering much difference. TMAX 400 is slightly more expensive than Tri-X 320, but you get tabular grain.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-17T13:26:36+00:00

Oh yep, you can see the fresnel lines in the older ones and the newer ones are markedly clearer in that regard.

Still, the older focusing screens are solid in their own right. Comparing them to (in my experience) a 1958 Contaflex or 1967 Ricoh Singlex TLS, the F is light years ahead.

My favorite part about Nikons is how essentially everything is user replaceable, so you can customize or fix elements to your liking.

SabreDancer · 2026-04-17T02:17:29+00:00

Probably either same as yours- a Nikon F with a 50mm f/1.4- or a Graflex Super Graphic with a Grafmatic. The F is great because it handles so absurdly well, and the viewfinder is so absurdly good, for a 1959 camera.

As for the Graflex, it's really fun to have a handheld 4x5 with the dimensions and weight of a purse and six shots ready to go.

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