I've had in-camera flare problems with ultrawide lenses on large format cameras. When shooting at night, for example, a bright light source in the scene will reflect off of an inside surface of the camera, fogging an area at the edge of the film nearest the lightsource. I solved the problem in my home-built 6x12 camera by gluing strips of black velvet inside (although it had previously been spray painted matte black, it still reflected lots of light from the 45mm Grandagon; black velvet eliminated the reflections). Unfortunately, black velvet has thousands of little fibers that tend to keep falling off once it has been cut. Sometimes they end up on the film and cause fatal pinholes. My Arca-Swiss 5x7 also needs flare-proofing, but I want to find a non fiberous substitute for the black velvet. Does anyone know of any material with the same low reflectivity but without the little fibers?

-- Anonymous, February 09, 1998