What about two sheets of 8×10?

Okay, we knew you were going to ask.

We tried. We really, really tried. It sounds simple: just stack one sheet on top of the other. However, after too many different designs and over fifty sheets of 8×10 (and we’re not even counting the 5×7 and 4×5 sheets), we decided it wasn’t going to happen.

• With some film/chemistry combinations, we got decent results, but with other film/chemistry combos, we got uneven development. In some cases, you could even see a “shadow” of the film holder on the lower negative. Unfortunately, even the good results were highly dependent on the agitation technique used.
• It took a lot of liquid, over 1200 ml. That’s two to three times the minimum required for a single sheet. In fact, we’ve successfully processed a single sheet in only 400 ml.
• Not everyone was that enthused about a two sheet solution. Our marketing data shows that only 15% required a two sheet system. In fact, another 15% said they’d never process two sheets at once. The rest thought it was a neat feature but not essential. We’ll just have to wait and see how accurate our data was.

So, in order to keep things simple and affordable, we dropped the two sheet design goal.