Polaroid 110b to 4x5 graflok conversion-any instructions available?

Diwan: Here's a photo of the back of my box camera. Notice I nested the two boxes in reverse to act as a light trap; because of the interior frames, which you can't see, the light would have to make four 90 degree bends before getting into the camera.

 

Sorry that the photo is a little blurry, I should have set it on macro.<div></div>

I think I get it now, essentially the bellows and the Pola frame aren't wide enough for 4x5 at the existing infinity stop. Since 127mm is considered a slight wide angle lens for 4x5. The bellows need to go further back. And that is why a 150mm lens would work since that size is considered a normal lens for 4x5 whereas a 127mm is considered normal for polas.

 

Noah, Adrian, Dean, Diwan: please stay tuned, I want to submit a photo summarizing the steps for moving the front standard back. I would like to put text and arrows on the photo. Then you all can read it and give it a thumbsup/thumbs down. I've got the photo but I won't be able to get to it until later today.

Frank:

 

If I may propose, it could be a good idea to continue this thread under a different heading. The text and photos for this one are getting too large to load.

 

The ideal place would be the LF forum. Thus, all this valuable info can be readily accessible to anyone that wants to either fabricate or modify equipment for a 4x5 camera.

 

Your box is great. You will have to tell me what "trick" you used to make the box at right angles. After all this time, I still cannot make a straight cut with a saw.

 

The only thing needed to your creation is a film holding back and a device to hold the lens. Almost all set, almost ready to go.

 

I also would like, if possible, to see details of the nested box light trap. I believe that you came up with a very creative solution for this.

 

Your next problem: how to develop 4x5 negatives in an efficient manner... This is the next and very exciting phase of the project. Hint: tray development is not an option... Hehehe...

 

Best,

Here is my summary of modifying the front standard of the Pola. Does this sound about right?

 

Diwan: I will create a new post for my completed camera. This one is getting pretty close to the end anywy<div></div>

Sorry about the big photo. Here is a smaller one that has the steps listed (forgot to hit Save).<div></div>

Frank:

 

You got it! That is the idea. Then do as Mr. Schwarz says, collimate the infinity setting and you are all set.

 

He fixes the infinity plate with screws in holes drilled in the lens carriage plate. I could not do that, because of lack of tooling. I went the glue way, but if you have access to tooling, his way is the best.

 

Yes, definitely, please post as many pictures of this modification as you can, also of the wooden camera, with the light trap for the two halves of the box.

 

Great, you will have a result that you can call your own. Now the most difficult part, you have to come up with a "logo" to put on your camera, this is the most creative part of this adventure.

 

Will be watching your next post. Congratulations, good job, a well made camera.

This is such a tedious bunch of blather I'm shocked.

 

You should realize that all patents are not ironclad and can be challenged in court. They can be overturned or revoked at any time.

 

In fact, a patent must be "NON OBVIOUS" and therefore if two people come up with the same solution to a problem at the same time the answer is that the solution is "OBVIOUS" and not "NOVEL".

 

If a person can be shown to have carried out "DUE DILLIGENCE" in his work to circumvent a given existing patent, he is not judged guilty of willful infringement and cannot be asessed treble damages. He can be merely asessed a minor fine or at minimum told to cease and desist.

 

A patent must also show some utility. Patents are granted on the expectation of being useful. If they are not commerciallized, they are considered to be 'ABANDONED' and no longer in force.

 

There are so many rules on patents and there is so much to patent law that no one here can be fully cognizant of what really is involved, myself included, and I worked in the EK patent office for a year soaking up this stuff.

 

Good luck guys.

 

Oh, I believe that anyone can make a one off design of their own, even if it is similar to an existing patent, as long as they don't sell it. They can even show it to friends or tell them about it. As long as they make no profit. Now, I might be wrong, as I said above, the law is a maze. We are the rats running that maze. Some are more 'ratty' than others.

 

And before anyone threatens me, I name no names, make no accusations nor do I accuse anyone of anything except shocking me and not being experts at patent law. If you think I am doing any of the above or anything worse then you may have a guilty conscience. Before you judge that statement, note that I said "may". I am not qualified to make that judgment either. This disclaimer is in keeping with the tenor of this thread and is intended to absolve me of any culpability, as I mean no harm.

 

What a laugh.

 

Have fun.

 

Ron Mowrey

THIS IS FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN DIY PROJECT.

 

There is a yahoo group for discussing design of large format cameras http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cameramakers/. If you need help in your design you should join that group. There are lots of very helpful people there who will be able to answer most of your questions [actually some then already posted on this thread, small world :-) ].

I just want to preface my post with an apology for possibly opening up old wounds and debates here from last year. But I, as an eternal egotistical jerk, MUST get my 2 cents worth in! ;)

 

You know, as a graphic and web designer, a creative and brand consultant for the past 10 years, I recognize the concept of copyright and intellectual property, so I tend to sympathize with those who hold patents on something. IP is a very important thing to protect. People quickly forget that ideas are property just as much as a tangible item is.

 

But I gotta say something here to William Littman:

 

Has this been worth it?

 

Seriously, I wonder if this strict defense of an idea you had has been worth turning your name into, dare I say, a bad word? This isn't me talking here. This is every single person I know that knows anything about 4x5 conversions!

 

I don't know a single person, professional, hobbyist, etc. that hasn't snickered when I mention the word "Littman".

 

Realize that I am not personally defaming you. I'm sure your product is top-notch. This is simply a perception I'm getting, and expressing in an open discussion forum here, based on a precedent set long ago with Littman's and Jone's open debate (let's be honest: flame fest), that the Littman brand has become not so much a symbol of 4x5 conversions of Polaroid cameras, but rather a guy who has a patent and goes around harrassing folks who have also made 4x5 converions of Polaroid patents. AGAIN, this is NOT my defamation of your character. This is simply the PERCEPTION that the *marketplace* has of Littman, "himself". And before we can suggest that this perception is the result of actual defamation, and therefore supports a defamation argument that could be made from Littman, we'd have to have all the proof and probably discuss this in terms of the law. So let's not go there. Let's just talk about PERCEPTION.

 

Perhaps there are well-off semi-retired folks who buy your products, I don't know. Maybe you're making a really good living doing this at this point. I mean, I saw your website, it's really excellent design (although the navigation is clumsy a bit, but you probably don't have a web designer on hand) compared to the other guys. But I talk to a lot of people and I have yet to hear someone who's used your product. It seems, by the way you have become known, that the "Littman" name has become quite a liability to the Littman brand, if anything. And this could very well be a bottleneck (I'm guessing) towards sales.

 

So has this been worth it?

 

We all know that IP needs to be protected. But at what point does one expend one's energy on seriously protecting a nebulous concept (improving existing patent ALWAYS enters a nebulous region, I don't care what YOUR lawyer tells you) to the the detriment of the actual brand?

 

I don't claim to know how successful your business is, but everywhere I go and everyone I talk to would say you could possibly have crossed that point.

 

So has it been worth it?

 

Forget about LAW and your rights and all that stuff. As a businessperson, you MUST surrender viewpoints and principles to form an objective analysis. Think about the marketplace. Think about the business, the PRODUCT.

 

Has all this effort been worth it?

Mr. Engel and everyone else:

Happy thanksgiving

 

If business people are expected to surrender to objective analysis; that is not what has happened in photo.net.

2 individuals admitted to orchestrating a Defamatory campaign against me and my product as a means to admittedly extort me into waiving my rights ,resort to solicitation and proceed to advertise products and services on the threads in violation of the sites policies.

 

As a result I was unfairly prevented from doing my work for years while these people boasted they were doing that to stop me or at least keep me busy.

 

When I presented evidence between September 18th 2006 and September 26th so as to clear my name this evidence was destroyed and deleted

alleging that forum moderation was off topic for the LF forum when the fact is that those who favor expression will tell you that nothing which constitutes evidence is off topic on a legal matter if it is required to allow someone being defamed the right to clear his name.

 

This website allowed businesses to post threads which are commercially oriented postings by businesses, these people made false imputations and misrepresented the facts as a means to then tell people to not associate with me or my product and to purchase theirs instead.

 

Whenever my clients offered an objective response to the performance of my product and in some cases after trying mine and theirs they were chased away by the people trying to sell products and by their buddies who invalidated them and told them that if they already knew they were interested in my product and wanted to buy one then to go away and "leave the rest of us alone".these people admitted the defamation should remain posted as a means of discouraging people from associating with me or buying my product and when someone stated" I want to buy a Littman camera the person who admitted to starting the defamation as instigation said he was surprised that this person was even considering such decision after reading the defamation and perhaps he should read it again.

 

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00HZY6&tag=

 

 

Despite the burden placed upon me by such defamation and the ensuing refusal by this website to remove it despite the fact all of it has been admitted to been instigated , malicious , false and intended to cause harm; I nevertheless and at great cost proceeded to dedicated the time to confront the technical aspects and demonstrated the differences in the tangible and technical aspects to the best of my ability but it was the insistences of my opponents who disputed my findings and choices which proved I was telling the truth as in later discussions they embraced my positions which they had disputed earlier to insist these were their ideas. which is again nothing but further defamation.

 

The answer is none of it is worth it and I have no intention of forgetting the law as you Or Mr. Mottershead suggest and as I was publicly humiliated by Mr. Mottersead on this thread on august 30th 2005 and as a result of the pain and suffering I nearly died 5 days later which is something I am really trying to forget I remind Mr. Mottershead that he had stated the following on a LF thread

 

"Brian Mottershead , aug 05, 2003; 10:07 a.m.

the Terms of Use state that forums aren't to be used for classified ads or for commercially-oriented postings. "

" the non-commercialism policy is not one of the things that is left "up" to the forum participants or moderators. "

 

the intellectual property policy of this site at such time stated that the site could not be used by anyone to violate anyone's intellectual property rights

 

None of the original threads or these fake DIY threads instigated by the same people to plug their products and services should have been allowed.,

 

Instead of doing the right thing when I presented the evidence the website moved to suppress the evidence and inform on September 23rd 2006 that the editor in chief had stepped down and they proceeded to change the terms of use and remove and evidence that would show wrongdoing by photo.net and the terms of use were modified as a result.

 

 

 

The pendulum between expression and reputation oscillates between the two. some favor one over the other but the justification for expression is always a quest for the truth but here it has been repeatedly admitted that the purpose was to harm my reputation as a means of self promotion by a few.

 

When a few are allowed to admittedly resort to defamation and harming others reputations is the case in these matters where written threats to resort to these defamation for solicitation tactics were sent to me by email by the culprits as a means to extort me into surrendering my rights because they admit they " can sure use the publicity or that the threads would be started to " leave it up to the public to decide" when the fact remains that defamation which has been admitted false and malicious was what was presented for the public to decide and then they were sent to read it again at each turn such defamation would benefit the sales pitch .

 

I would like to be able to concentrate on my product and have been waiting for over 3 years for this website to stop allowing businesses to admittedly trying to stop me or at least keep me busy.

 

As to what constitutes defamation and inducement of infringement you can find clarification at the bottom of the following page

 

http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=littmanphotodesign

 

Taking 10 years of my life to make something be better than expected was worth it, being cohersed to overcome the negative effects of the admitted defamation was not because in the end I was deliberately deprived from clearing my name and the defamation remained so that a few could misrepresent that the good thing for such defamation to remain is that it would appear in searches and hurt future sales.

 

I thank you very much I will not surrender to these tactics and Im not being asked me to forget the law but decency itself

I wish you a happy thanksgiving and that it may be a great opportunity so that you may all be able to enjoy the reputation and respect of your peers that you have worked hard to earn without causing harm to the reputation of others.

sincerely William Littman

 

 

 

 

Thanks for your response, William. I just wanted to understand and have everything put out on the table if you were willing, and you provided a pretty good rundown of "the issue" up until this point. It has always seemed to me (and I've been in the marketing and branding business for a while now) that at a certain point of conflict, we allow our product and name to become liabilities to further growth. We have to become aware of this and force ourselves to switch from subjective to objective. It's at that point where we may have to surrender a particular principle that may be an impedement rather than a benefit. Whatever one can do to tip the balance in favor of the truth of the PRODUCT (never mind non-related issues) is required, and this may require the sacrifice or surrender of some arguments, principles and points of contention (you see it all the time, founders of companies being asked to leave, CEOs fired, etc.). However it seems to me you have already surrendered much and learned a heck of a lot of lessons in this adventure. I hope you and your peers arrive at some sort of amenity. By the way, I am very sad to hear of your near-tragedy. I wish you well in this new year and your product much success.

Well, this a years late post, but after reading it (most of it anyway) I just have to say that this Littman character is one nasty SOB nutcase. Wow. I am not presently in the market for anything that he sells, but he definitely should, as someone else said, go away. Go far away. What a jerk! Has to be one of the worst posts I have ever seen on any forum of any kind anywhere. I will be more than happy to defame the idiot, whatever that means. Any judge that looked at the posts here would probably sue Littman himself!

 

May all of his lenses get fungus, and I hope that his brains fall out and he treads on them and falls down.

HOLEY Crap, this is the Craziest thread i have ever fricken seen , well at least now i know what the same dam person on ebay out bids me all the time i try to buy a 110 an all i can buy is the 800, even the friggen 900 i bought for the Ranger finder was 2 times as much , and yea i was out bid 3 times by the same person before i won one finally. But its a shame that this Mr. Littman is so unstable. But i don't know him and maby he is just a poor writer and is not conveying his thoughts properly. He sure is long winded. I'd rather hit myself in the head with a tack hammer than read all what he writes.

 

Well my plans now for the 2 Polaroids i have, are to swap the ranger finders on the 900 and 800, and make thm roll film cameras with 70mm film. Because I was told that the front standard on the 800 was better and the 900 had a better range finder. Maby im wrong, i dono so far no one that i asked advice from on this site has told me different. I just keep being told to make a 4x5. I would like a 4x5 someday , but a roll film camera is easier to use and cheaper, i don't have to buy all those expensive double dark sheet film holders and a roll of 12 exposures is is easier and lighter to carry arround, heck i can even carry 2 or 3 rolls easier than the equivalent holders.

<p>Well, no thanks to William Littman who almost successfully put me off reading this thread in the hope of gleaning some useful information. That was his goal all along - if he can't get info about conversions deleted, he will obfuscate, annoy, harrass and generally pollute the forum so that anyone coming along later will give up, thinking there's nothing useful here. A tip for future readers - skim down the thread and ignore anything by WL, it contains nothing of use. Skip over the vast majority of responses to him, for the same reason, and tarry for a while on contributions from the individuals named here in bold...<br>

Many thanks to <strong>Diwan, Noah, Dean</strong> and others who, despite egregious interference, kept sight of the original query and provided the exact information I was after in my attempt to create a useful 4x5 out of a 110A, namely, how far back to bring the new film plane and how to adjust the front standard.<br>

As to my attempt - I really can't be bothered with all that messing around with the RF and it occurred to me that a custom-made slimfit film holder holder would be easy to fabricate from brass angle stock - just a simple frame mounted on the cutaway back door, at the correct distance. The frame would take a standard Lisco holder and the film holder held in place by stretchy springs, Velcro'd elastic straps, or similar. I'd thought of a mostly identical outer frame to go above the Lisco and be held similarly - a few options will occur as I go along, this being purely seat of the pants engineering.<br>

As I see it, building to a standard film holder with elasticity on thickness will allow me to slot in a Pola 545i back (which I've just scored for three Euros - bargain of the year, that one; were they all asleep?), a Pola 405, or a rollfilm back I already possess with a bit of modification to location for that, as it's for 9x12cm. Keeping a slimline custom film holder holder in place will allow use of the standard pair of RF and VF windows on the 110A. This was also influenced by the crazy prices now being attracted by 900s.</p>

<p>Littman needs to take a chill pill. The lawyers will take him for more than all the Polaroids in the world are worth, and then some. Sure, there's a patent, it belonged to POLAROID and it ran out a long time ago- and then Polaroid abandoned the format. What's that say ?<br>

Anyone can modify a camera to a different format, use it, then dispose of it through resale. That's not "patent infringement". Anyone can modify a camera for someone else- who's to say it cost anything, and how would Littman even prove funds exchanged hands ? He's pee-ing up a tree there. Sure the lawyers will tell Littman there is a case, because they're charging him $200/hour to defend it- they'll lose anyway, but still get paid in the meantime. <br>

Does he really think a lawyer is going to sue someone over patent rights for building ONE camera, for an obsolete format ?<br>

There's also freedom of use clauses- if a camera film is discontinued, the owner has an inherent right to be able to modify it to make is useful again- and there's not a damned thing Littman can do to stop them. If you have a 1935 Ford model B car, and the engine blows up, you can put a modern Chevy engine in it to make it run again.<br>

Chevy sure as heck won't sue you.<br>

The 4x5 format was not invented by Littman, it's been around since the 1800's.<br>

Obviously a few planned to "cash in" on these 3x4 and 4x5 conversions in a big way. (most likely to pay the extensive film costs for their own hobby) This thread proves they are basically selling a dolled up garage project that anyone can do at home for about $50, with average mechanical skills and hand tools. They are getting a bit carried away with the aesthetics- and price.<br>

If the price is much more than $300 for a finished conversion, one is better off just buying a Graflex on Ebay, and using it as is. It has a better lens, more features, and takes better pictures than any Polaroid conversion- and comes factory with Graflok back- they invented it.</p>

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