Nice, liquid electric tape was my first thought but I decided to look to youtube to see what everyone else was trying, happy to see this confirmation.

I have a solution that may interest you, I dedicate myself to restoring cameras in Cuba which puts me in a very limited situation with resources and I discovered that a spectacular material is a black membrane that I extract from the paper of some medium format negatives, some marks They are a paper with an additional black layer that can be carefully peeled off, it is incredibly thin, totally lightproof and extremely flexible. The first accordion I repaired from a very deteriorated 1930 Zeiss Ikon was done 7 years ago and it is still perfect. I use a glue that shoemakers use, diluted a little in gasoline

Great video Chris. Super nice that you show the testing of the various methods. And thanks for the shout out! Returning the favor, I've now linked this video in the show notes of my bellows repair video, added this video to the end screen on mine so it'll link back and also put one of those pop up cards in the middle of my video, linking back here. So let's get some synergy going because people need to see this video.

cool, I have a million holes in my old Eastman View No.2 8x10, I have 22 peaks and every peak on all 4 sides have leaks. I hope this works. Film ain't cheap.

Marshall here. Flex Seal? That’s the first thing that came to mind. I use it for and it seems to work. Anyway, thanks fir the video.

I fixed a Agfa Isolette bellows with black electrical tape too. but thanks testing it out

The liquid electrical "tape" would've been my recommendation from the get-go, but nice to see that it actually works _that_ good! (I did just use it, without doing proper testing; I tried some other repair stuff more similar to this Silicon RTV before, and wasn't satisfied.)

On my bellows, I use a mix of flat black acrylic paint, water, and white glue in a 3:1:1 ratio. Applied from inside, works a treat.

I had the Toyo 45g from new. I used it for about 30 years for professional studio work. When the bellows started to leak light I used a thin black gaffer tape type material which I applied to all 4 corners. It worked a treat, and kept me in business. It’s a great camera.

Chris, thank you for the test of those 3 black fillers. I was always told that black liquid electrical tape was the way to go and now I know for sure. I'm going to make up a small repair kit in case my bellows is damaged while I'm on a trip. I think I will recycle one of my tiny tough plastic vials that my glucose test strips come in. Since it is fairly air-tight, a small bit of the liquid tape should last a while. Since I always have a small kit of Q-tips with me to clean lenses and filters, I can use one of those sticks as an applicator. Terry Thomas... the photographer Atlanta, Georgia USA

If you ever need to replace the bellows on your Toyo camera, eBay has some for sale. The only problem they can go from cheap to somewhat expensive. I though your solutions to the light leaks were real good options. I was thinking about the last video and your explanation about why you got into film. I think that because people now are rediscovering film without having schools or experienced mentors to teach them it makes it difficult to fully imagine the potential of film and to understand what it takes to get great images. For example if you wanted to shoot like Ansel Adams you would need to understand pre-visualization, learn how to work the zone system, Understand light, learn how to become a very good printer, have a knowledge of your subject, just to name a few of the steps you needed to learn. Ansel traveled to the many places he photographed and observed the light and how it hit the subject (landscape) at a certain time of day. When Adams took the famous picture of Moonrise Over Hernandez in New Mexico he understood the precise time the moon would be at the right position that he wanted in the photograph. its like a sports photographer knowing a sport so well that he can photograph the moment the ball gets into the hands of the receiver as he is jumping in mid air to catch the ball. What is important in photography is that you have to have a philosophy of how you shoot. Ansel Adams was also a musician and he connected the notes of a song, the beauty of music to his photographs. What digital photography had done is make it simple to take a bad photograph and make it into a decent one by making the manipulation of the image so easy. Photoshop now takes blemishes out almost automatically, you can change the backgrounds, lighting, clothing, the place where the photo was taken and make it a totally different photograph. In photography there has always been manipulation of a photo, but it was dodging, burning-in, addition of props, using artificial lights but nothing compared to the digital process with the computer and software. One last thing if you are working with black and white film, color film, or digital, each is a medium on its own and has to be worked differently. Black and white is based on light sensitive silver particles and has to be worked to optimize the gray scale. Color film which is also based on silver has color dyes, digital is pixels and ink which has a different look and feel than the silver based image. Your digital black and White image at this moment cannot produce a zone system quality black and white print. As you said it digital is close to color film, but it is different too look at because prints are printed with inks and it looses that feeling a silver based print has. If your interested there are books on eBay and Amazon on using a View camera which explain things like bellows extension factor.

good video thanks

Hey thanks for this I'm trying to get an old autographic brownie up and running and it has so many pin holes, I got gasket rubber and applied that all over, didn't work now it's taking me forever to get it off as it isn't light tight at all, (my fault I did this ages before I watched this) now I'm ether going to get flex seal or liquid electrical tape

Thanks so much for testing I was on the fence about what to use. I also thought the Permatex would be best but now see the liquid electrical tape is the way to go. Going to repair some old Kodak 3A cameras bellows.

Very helpful stuff. Just what I needed to fix my folder. Excellent choice in background music too!

Just curious if you did any deep cleaning and lubricating when you got your camera. I just got a 45CX in really good shape but it has a lot of dried grease and sticky oil on it. In the Toyo manuals I can find they just say to wipe it down with a cloth is all you need to do basically so I don't know if these cameras should have any oil or grease on them at all. Seems like a small amount will help in certain areas though.

There are many light leaks that can happen, especially on view cameras that are old or hand made and wood The hardest to fix is when the film holder no longer sits right against the camera back and there are lights around the edge of the film holders . You will get a lot of dog and sometimes black or dark negatives for all the light bleeding in. New bellows won’t fix that

Great info -- thanks! Exactly what I needed. :)

Thinking of trying this with my Kodak 3C. This camera isn't so precious, but would be a project to try to shoot some film with it. 120 isn't large format, really, but whatever. We'll see.

Might cut the "liquid tape" 1:1 with MEK mix very well and apply in a few thin coats on both sides. Its hard to tell anything is on the surface at all.

FlexSeal

Curious how this solution is holding up - just saw some light leaks in my camera - probably using your solution.

Pliobond is the supposed option for bellows yet you have found another.