rachel_kinoshita

The best really is the NPC adapter because it's as close to 4x5 as possible. It attaches to your 545i back by replacing the side rails. An alternative is to take a 403 back, remove the film holder portion and mate the mounting plate to a 545 back. This is less than optimal as you'll only get a 3.25 x 4.25 image on film.

You have a couple of options, either the M or G adapter. The M adapter enables you to use Mamiya M backs. The G adapter is a graflok adapter which enables you to use Graflex 2x3 backs. Both adapters come up on eBay every once in a while.

As others have mentioned, yes you can connect 5 9v batteries in series. However, I couldn't find any way to cram all of the batteries inside the case, so I had to tape them to the outside. However, if you're really into using the retro Wink Light and want it to be as authentic as possible, you can take apart the original 45v battery and put two 22.5v Eveready batteries from Radio Shack, connected in series, into the 45v battery shell. Connect the + and - posts of the old 45v battery to the 22.5v cells, then fill in the extra space with modeling clay or if you really want to be authentic, use melted wax. The bulb used in the Wink Light is a 12v bulb and should be available online.

 

Regarding a decent lightmeter, I use the Voigtlander VC meter on my converted 110B. However, for any critical work, I end up using a spotmeter and for non-critical work, sunny 16 works fine.

 

Take Care,

Rachel

Hi Paul,

 

At first I thought I would measure everything precisely to get infinity focus just right. However, I found it easier to just mock everything up and match infinity focus on the helical device with the groundglass. Once that was done, I simply glued the lens cone together and everything worked out great.

 

I made the lens cone out of parts I found at my local hardware store. As I mentioned, I don't have any special tools or for that matter, any skills at using tools so I chose the material I thought would be the easiest to work with, plastic. Looking in the plumbing section, I found some ABS plastic connectors and end caps that I thought could fit together to make a reasonable lens cone. With a little drilling, shaping, sanding and gluing I had my finished product. It won't win any awards for design or aesthetics, but it works.

 

Thanks,

Rachel

Hi Paul,<br><br>

 

Okay, I took some quick snaps of the camera and posted them here:<br><br>

 

<a href=

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=543462>http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=543462</a>

<br><br>

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post. I used a Really Right Stuff L Bracket mounted to an aluminum plate I fashioned for the base. On the L bracket, I mounted a Linhof Grip. I had planned on attaching the grip to the small RRS clamp, but after assembling everything, I found it placed the grip too far away from the center of gravity. So, in the end, I attached the grip directly to the L bracket.<br><br>

The lens in the picture is a 90mm f8. I also have lensmount with a 65mm f4.5 on it. I may try to build a mount for something longer, maybe a 120 or 135mm lens.<br><br>

The nice thing about the Sinar back is that you can easily swap from horizontal to vertical, plus it's an international back, so using roll film holders and Grafmatic backs is a piece of cake.<br><br>

Thanks,<br>

Rachel

Hi Paul,

 

I'll take some pictures of it this weekend and post the link to them here. The only part I really made was the lensmount as I just took an unmodified Sinar rear frame, back and lensboard and put those together with the helical mount/lens. Along the top, I mounted three shoes and put on an old Voigtlander Rangefinder, a 4x5 Zoom finder and a new Voigtlander meter. I find that I don't use the meter much as I usually take my spotmeter with me, so I may replace that with a shoe mounted level.

 

I have to admit, I'm not very skilled with tools, so the lensmounts are somewhat crude, but they're functional.

 

Thanks,

Rachel

Hi. Search for the seller jinfinance. Look for item 7560540140 for one of his focusing mounts. As Dean mentioned, you can get it without the lensboard for $119. I built a handheld 4x5 out of a Sinar rear frame and jinfinance's focusing mounts. It works great.

 

Thanks,

Rachel

Hi Greg,

 

Depending on how badly it's broken, you may be able to swap it with tab on the other side. The 600SE has a slide lock and it really only catches on one side of the tab. If you take off both tabs, flip them around and re-install them, you may be able to get by with the broken one. If not, you can usually find backs for the 600SE on eBay for around $40.

 

Thanks,

Rachel

I purchased a 65mm and a 90mm helical focusing mount from the eBay seller jinfinance and have been very happy with both. I mounted a Schneider 65mm Super Angulon f5.6 in one and a Schneider 90mm SA f8 in the other. The focusing scales are a little off, but close enough.

 

Thanks,

Rachel

While I really like my Polaroid 600SE with the 545Pro back, there are some limitations. First, you don't really get a full-frame 4x5 image on film, both the left and right sides are cut-off by about an 1/8" of an inch. Second, you're limited to either Polaroid or Quick/Readyload film. I shoot a lot of Acros and E100VS, but sometimes I'd like to shoot Tri-X which isn't available in Readyload packets or maybe a 6x12 RFH which can't be used.

 

I also have a 110B that was converted to 4x5 for me by Steve Icanberry. He did a very nice job of adapting a Graflok back to the 110B and his prices are very reasonable.

 

Still, unless you already have the 110B and Graflok back, you'll probably end up paying close to $200 just for the parts. For $200 you can get a nice Crown Graphic which will allow you to easily swap lenses plus you'll get movements.

 

Take Care,

Rachel

Patrick,

 

The batteries are in the film pack, so everytime you put in a new pack of film, you get new batteries. If the film pack you're using is way out of date, I suppose it's possible the batteries could be dead. You might try taking the film pack out and re-inserting it. You'll lose one picture, but it might reseat the film pack so that it works again. If it doesn't, you might try another pack of film and see if that one works.

 

Thanks,

Rachel

Hi Walker,

 

I'm assuming you meant the 127mm lens. That is a nice lens, very sharp.

 

If you keep an eye on eBay, you can pick up a 2.25" x 3.25" Graflok back or a Mamiya M back adapter for the Polaroid 600SE. Then you can find either a Graflex 2.25" x 3.25" film back (available in 6x6, 6x7 or 6x9 formats) or a Mamiya M back (available in 6x7 or 6x9 fromat) for whichever adapter you get.

 

The Polaroid versions of the Graflok and M back adapters are getting kind of hard to find, so your alternative is to get an adapter for the Mamiya Universal and adapt that to fit your Polaroid. Good luck.

 

Thanks,

Rachel

Wow, you are lucky. Which lens/lenses did you get with it? As has already been mentioned, you can pick up an adapter that accepts a Polaroid 545i or 545 Pro back. The older metal 545 back definitely doesn't work with it. You should also know that it crops the left and right edges about 1/8" each.

 

Thanks,

Rachel

If you google the street address listed on their website you'll find a link to another home based business at that same address along with a toll-free number. If you do a whois of that other businesses domain name you'll find a phone number for the owner of the "the f stops here" as well as an alternative email address. You can also do a whois of the domain of the alternative email address and get the same phone number. I have no reason to believe it's not a totally legitimate business and perhaps the owner is on vacation or just super busy. The 25th is barely a week ago, so I would give them a few more days before getting too excited.

 

However, what I find really frightening and perhaps it' a statement on our lack of privacy in this electronic age is that you use google earth to zoom right in and practically look down their chimney.

Hi Donald,

 

The Polaroid 210 has a different rangefinder than the 250, but I believe the 350 has the same one. It's been awhile since I adjusted my 250's rangefinder, but if I remember correctly, you first remove the cover, then detach the entire rangefinder from the camera. On the underside of the rangefinder, you'll find a tiny adjusting screw for the rangefinder. It appears that the rangefinder was adjusted at the factory and then a small drop of epoxy was applied to the screw so it wouldn't move. If you use a small razor knife, you can get most of that off. Be careful when turning the adjusting screw though because it is so tiny, it can easily break if you haven't completely freed it.

 

You need to make a groundglass to compare the rangefinder against. To do that, take an old packfilm cartridge, remove the top section so you just have the part that fits against the film plane. I had an old 4x5 groundglass that I cut to fit the packfilm cartridge, but you can make your own if you want.

 

The time consuming part of adjusting the rangefinder is that you have to keep putting it back on, checking the groundglass, taking it back off making small adjustments, and continue doing that until you have it right. Once you're satisfied, be sure to add a drop of Loctite to the screw so it stays in place.

 

As I mentioned before, this only takes care of infinity focus, it doesn't do anything for the focusing curve of the different focal length lens. If you know you're going to be shooting most of the time from 8 to 20 feet, you may want to adjust your rangefinder so it's accurate at that distance rather than infinity.

 

Thanks,

Rachel

I've done this to a couple of 250's and it's really quite easy. I used 127mm Rodenstock lenses and Prontor shutters from a couple of beat up Polaroid 110A's. I actually wrote up some instructions a while ago, but for the life of me, I can't remember where I posted them. If I find them, I'll post them here.

 

Because the Prontor shutter mounts farther forward on the camera, infinity focusing is just about right. You may have to adjust your rangefinder slightly which actually takes as much time as the conversion itself. However, the focusing curve is going to be slightly off due to the different focal lengths, but as long as you stop down, your pictures should still be sharp.

 

Thanks,

Rachel

I have the same camera as well. The batteries are for the solenoid shutter release. There's a little button on the left hand side, by the leather handle. The batteries can be purchased from Radio Shack or Midwest Photo Exchange. They're the 22.5V batteries and you need two of them. They run about $14-$15 for the pair. When you look through the rangefinder, do you see the dual image? If not, it's possible the mirror has come loose, needs a good cleaning or needs to be replaced.

 

Thanks,

Rachel

Hi Steve,

 

I was interested in getting more control as well, so I tried a few things. The first was to mount the Holga lens and focusing mount on to the front of an old Prontor shutter and then mount that back onto a stripped down Holga body. What I found is that the lens was a little to far forward for infinity focus and because it was front mounted on the shutter, I would get a smaller image circle, sort of like what you see with a circular fisheye.

 

The second thing I tried was taking the lens element out of the Holga focusing mount and installing it directly into the shutter. That actually worked fairly well, but of course, I now had a fixed focus camera. In order to ensure I got everything in focus, I had to stop the shutter way down and then I found the image was too sharp and lost a lot of the toy camera qualities.

 

So, what I finally ended up doing is buying an old Century Graphic and mounting the Holga lens/Prontor shutter onto a lensboard and adjusting the rangefinder for the 60mm lens. I also picked up a Graflex 6x6 rollfilm holder so I can still shoot square. I also wanted to continue shooting Polaroid's, so I fashioned a Polaroid packfilm holder to fit that Century's smaller Graflok back. There are still some kinks to be worked out. I don't get as much vignetting as I did with the Holga body. I think that can be solved with a black tube on the back of the shutter, but I haven't had time to try it out.

 

Rachel

First, make sure you've removed the darkslide. There's a storage slot for it on the rear part of the Polaroid back so you won't lose it. The holga has a shutter speed of about 1/100th of a second and unless you've modified it you only get about an F11 aperture. If you have done the aperture mod you probably have about F8 on the Cloudy setting and F11 on the Sunny setting. So, with type 84 film (ISO 100) you should be able to shoot outdoors with moderately bright sun without any filters and get reasonable results. With type 87, you can shoot indoors with fairly low light.

 

If you want to shoot at night in darkness, then you'll probabaly need to modify your Holga so it has a bulb setting and a tripod mount. Or you can just buy one of the newer Holga's that already has these two features.

 

Rachel

Hi Danny,

 

If you go to www.landlist.com it describes doing exactly that. Keep in mind that you'll only get a 3.25" x 4.25" image. I shot one exposure using that method and it came out fine. Since then I've had two of my 110Bs converted to 4x5 and with Quick/Readyloads, I don't have to mess around with changing bags.

 

 

Rachel

When you say "imaginary holes that are supposed to be present when you remove the 645 mask/insert", I assume you're referring to the ones on either side of the film gate. However, when you remove the 645 mask, there is a slight gap at the bottom of the film gate where light coming in from the shutter can "leak" onto the next frame. If the previous shot to this one was also shot in bright sunlight that may be the cause.

 

Instead of removing the 645 insert altogether, you might try cutting the opening to a 6x6 hole and then fashioning some baffles to either side. This has kept all of my Holga's nice and light tight.

 

Rachel

Hi Dan,

 

I don't necessarily agree that the camera is weird and not for professional use because I use it professionally all the time. I do agree that like any camera it does take some time to get used to its idiosyncrasies. I have a Mamiya 7 with the 43mm, 80mm and 150mm lenses that I also use professionally and while I love that camera, the 110B still gets used a lot depending on the job I'm doing. I would encourage you give the camera a bit more time, but if you decide it's not for you, I'm sure you won't have a hard time selling it.

 

Clearly a modified 110B isn't for everyone, but if you want a small, handheld 4x5, it's hard to beat. I have both a Speed Graphic and a Super Speed Graphic and the 110B is much easier to carry around for an extended period of time. As far as lenses go, I use the 127mm Rodenstock that came with it. Unlike Graphic cameras, the 110B doesn't have easy interchangeable cams, so changing lenses means losing the use of the Rangefinder.

 

Rachel

Hi Dan,

 

I believe the focus problem you're seeing with vertical orientation, shooting at a sharp angle is just the nature of rangefinder focusing. The primary image window is closer to the subject than the secondary rangefinder window so when the two images line up, they're actually out of focus. There are a few ways to work around this, focus horizontally, rotate your camera, compose, then shoot; stop down to increase your depth of focus; or just know that you'll have to compensate a bit when you shooting at vertically.

 

With regards to the parallax correction, mine was modified to do this, but I find that it's still not very accurate. What I did was spend some time shooting Polaroids and then compared the resulting image with what's in the viewfinder. For mine, the left, top and right lines are consistently just inside of where the image ends. However, the bottom line varies a little more depending on how close or far I am from the subject, so I have to compensate for it depending on distance.

 

Rachel

Hi Dan,

 

With my 110B, I usually focus horizontally then rotate the camera 90 degrees, recompose, then shoot. I just find it easier to focus on subjects left to right rather than up to down. If you level your camera, focus on something horizontally, then rotate your camera, is the image in the rangefinder out of alignment? If so, something is moving inside your rangefinder mechanism. If, when shooting vertically, you're tilting your camera up or down, then the rangefinder will be somewhat off because the two rangefinder windows are different distances from the subject.

 

Regarding your 90% inaccuracy rate, is that handheld or on a tripod? Handholding a 110B takes some getting used to. First of all, it's fairly heavy and if you're using the original shutter release, it's a little unwieldily, so it's easy to introduce camera shake. I don't know what distance you're shooting at, but keep in mind that at 8' using the 110B's 127mm lens on 4x5 film shot at f4.7 (wide open), your depth of focus is only about 8" in front and 8" in back of your subject.

 

Rachel

Keeble and Shuchat in Palo Alto (about 45 minutes south of the City) would be my first recommendation. Calumet has a fair amount of LF equipment, but it's hit or miss as to what they have in stock.

 

Rachel