Digital BW, The Print

Have you thought about taking a stab at cutting 4x5 sheets down?  It's not 
really that hard.  You need a small trimmer with an adjustable stop, and a 
totally dark place to work.  Sacrifice a sheet of film to the light gods to 
use as a setup pattern, set the cutter stop for one of the dimensions, wipe 
off the work surface of the cutter and be sure it's dry, wash your hands 
thoroughly and be sure they're dry, turn out the lights and cut all sheets 
down to one correct dimension (one sheet at a time), put them back in their 
light tight box, turn on the lights, reset the cutter stop, turn out the 
lights and run the sheets through again to cut the second dimension.  The 
fit of sheet film in a holder is never perfect, so if  your cuts are off by 
a few thousandths or even a few hundredths it won't matter.  Just be sure 
you don't cut off the film identification notches, as they help you 
determine which side is the emulsion side when you go to load the holders 
in the dark.

Give it a try, you might find it's not nearly as tough as you imagine it to 
be.  You want to be careful not to scratch the film surface, but remember 
that you don't enlarge this film as much as you do 35mm or even 120, so if 
you do end up with some micro scratches here and there it may not even show 
on a print.

Cheers,
Kip

At 7/18/2003 01:17 PM -0600, Lil wrote, in part:

><snip>
>
>The bad news is that it's  3.25x4.25, which is no longer sold. No way do I 
>have the facilities to trim sheet film to fit!