dan_fromm2

It depends a bit on budget, what you do and which lenses you have. I recently broke down and got a DSLR that can use my old manual focus Nikkors. The D850 appealed but a used D810 was much less expensive and better than good enough so that's what I got.

 

For one of my applications, hand held macro with flash illumination and dim ambient lighting the D810 is harder to focus than I like. My old flash rigs still work but dim ambient = dim view in the finder = great difficulty in seeing when the subject (unconstrained fish in an aquarium) is in focus. I might have been better off, if much poorer, if I'd got a mirrorless.

Folks, there are fire sales and then there are fire sales. Stores have fire sales.

 

In 1969, when I was in the US Army at Fort Jackson, S.C., there was a fire in a PX warehouse. After the fire, a fire sale.

 

I bought a fire sale Yashica SU60E S8 cine camera new in box, without fire, smoke or water damage, for pennies. It was DOA, as were many S8 camera of that era. See Lenny Lipton's The S8 Book about that. After a bit of wrangling Yashica repaired it on warranty. And then it took good footage.

Here's a link to your image, with a few markings: mamiya lens retaining ring.jpg

 

The slots in the red circles are in the shutter's retaining ring. Use a spanner to unscrew the ring.

Don, I have two 2x3 Grafmatics, one busted (internal spring), the other OK, that I've never used. I shoot roll film with my little Graphics.

 

The consensus, such as it is, on graflex.org and largeformatphotography.info/forum/ is that good ones are very useful.

Geoff, that device at the B mark is a flash cable adapter. It fits on the shutter's Kodak/ASA flash terminal, accepts a PC flash cable.

 

Don, I have most of the standard issue normal lenses for Century Graphics. Don't ask. They are in Rapax/Graphex or Flash Supematic shutters. All the shutters have normal ordinary cable release sockets. I've seen some that have had screws in the cable release socket. If your shutter (what is it?) has a cable release socket with a screw, remove it and you'll be able to use a normal ordinary cable release to fire the shutter.

Cowboy, stopping down will reduce mechanical vignetting caused by the rear of the lens' barrel. Do the experiment. It does the same for the front of the lens' barrel. I just tried it. Do the same.

John Shaw is a good photographer but a poor teacher. Get Lefkowitz.

 

Angel, Heather. 1987 (revised, originally published in 1983). Book of Close-Up

Photography. Originally published by Ebury, London. Revised edition published by A.

A. Knopf Inc. 168 pp. ISBN 0394532325. A much better book than John Shaw's

Closeups In Nature. If nothing else, she uses and discusses more than Nikons. Angel

does the John Shaw thing better than he does.

 

Blaker, Alfred A. 1976. Field Photography. W. H. Freeman & Co. San Francisco, CA.

451 pp. ISBN 0-7167-0518-4. A deep discussion of all aspects of photography, with

considerable emphasis on close-up. Discusses getting the magnification, lighting, and

exposure. Weaker than Lefkowitz on working above 1:1, stronger on lighting, especially

flash. Extensive bibliography.

 

Bracegirdle, Brian. 1995. Scientific PhotoMACROgraphy. Bios Scientific Publishers.

Oxford. 105 pp. ISBN 1 872748 49 X. A terse drier updated version of Lefkowitz. Very

useful bibliography, unfortunately scattered into small sections after most chapters.

 

Gibson, H. Lou. Close-Up Photography and Photomacrography. 1970. Publication N-

16. Eastman Kodak Co. Rochester, NY. 98+95+6 pp. The two sections were published

separately as Kodak Publications N-12A and N-12B respectively. Republished in 1977

with changes and without the 6 page analytic supplement, which was published

separately as Kodak Publication N-15. 1977 edition is ISBN 0-87985-206-2. Gibson is

very strong on lighting, exposure, and on what can and cannot be accomplished. His

books, although relatively weak on getting the magnification with lenses made for

modern SLR cameras, provide a very useful foundation for thinking about working at

magnifications above 1:10 and especially above 1:1. Extensive bibliography.

 

Lefkowitz, Lester. 1979. The Manual of Close-Up Photography. Amphoto. Garden

City, NY. 272 pp. ISBN 0-8174-2456-3 (hardbound) and 0-8174-2130-0 (softbound). A

thorough discussion of getting the magnification, lighting, and exposure. Especially good

on working above 1:1. Extensive bibliography.

What is this silliness?

 

The distance between a lens' rear node and the film plane when the lens is focused at infinity is the focal length. This is true regardless is the size of the sensitized surface behind the lens. The distance between a lens' rear node and the film plane when the lens is focused at a closer distance is also invariant with respect to the size of the sensitized surface.

Thanks for the suggestion. I should say that ES-1 will not do as I need to capture strips of film. Most of the old bellows solutions appear to be designed for mounted slides.

Niels, the ES-1 doesn't come with a holder for a roll of negatives. The PS-4, which attaches to the PB-4 bellows and I don't know which others, does.

I recently got a used D810, have used it for digitizing slides with the ES-1 I bought years ago at a camera show for $5 and with the PB-4 + PS-4 I bought new in 1970.

 

The ES-1 telescopes and setting it at 1:1 with a 55/2.8 MicroNikkor AIS is easy -- just mount the lens on its PK-27 on the camera, dial in 1:2, attach the ES-1, pull the tube all the way out -- but making the slide perfectly level isn't easy. Setting the bellows to get 1:1 with the lens on an E-2 is more difficult but the slide is automatically leveled.

 

OP, look into getting a bellows and slide holder.

I am planning on using a roll of Kodak Gold 100 on a bright, sunny day. I will be testing different EV settings for the scenes using the light meter and shooting the same using the camera's meter for side-by-side checks for comparisons. I will first test using the stock 50mm lens; plus, I will test the 35mm and 80mm lenses as well. More come...

Not the best idea. C-41 films like Kodak Gold, for that matter all negative films, have considerable exposure latitude. If you're going to pretend to test, you should use a narrow latitude reversal film. Try an ISO 100 E-6 film.

OP, do you have the manual? Have you read it?

I don't see why not. Whether you'll like to use it with a 75 is another question. If you haven't bought an SG yet, think about other field cameras that are easier to use.

The only difference between the Super Graphic and Super Speed Graphic is the shutter the standard issue normal lens is in. The bodies are the same.

 

The Super Graphic (SSG too if you don't understand "the bodies are the same") is hostile to short lenses. This because the inner and outer bed rails are not linked. Focusing a lens that makes infinity with the standard on the inner bed rails isn't easy. See http://www.bnphoto.org/bnphoto/LFN/CamProf_SuperGraphic.htm

 

If you want a Graphic (not Graflex, in Graflex-speak Graflex means SLR) that works well with w/a lenses get a Pacemaker Crown Graphic. Pacemaker Graphics (Speed with focal plane shutter, Crown with a thinner body and no fps) have linked inner and outer bed rails.

 

That said, Charles Monday, who posts elsewhere as Shutterfinger, once told me that the SG's minimum extension is 41.9 mm. If he's right this is usefully shorter than the 4x5 Crown Graphic's 52.4 mm.

 

All this may be moot. What short focal length(s) do you have in mind?

In the days when all cameras were large-format plate cameras, they were broadly divided into fixed-bed stand-mounted studio monsters and lighter, smaller and more portable view cameras. 'View' being synonymous with 'vista', 'landscape' or 'field'.

 

Now, when the term view-camera became twisted into meaning any large format camera I have no idea. Probably about the same time the front-crawl swimming stroke became crazily renamed as 'freestyle' I suspect. But common-sense and a knowledge of the English language - rather than some moronic babble on Wikipedia - should tell us that 'view camera' refers to a lightweight landscape camera.

 

Monorail cameras are monorail cameras.

Technical cameras are technical cameras.

While both of the above generally offer more movements than a field or view camera.

I now see that you're a member in good standing of the Humpty Dumpty school of lexicography.

FWIW. The likes of Linhofs and MPPs are technical cameras; view cameras are usually lighter in weight and offer fewer/less movements. A technical camera is probably overkill for landscape use.

 

View cameras have more movements, in particular nearly all monorails have full rear movements. For landscape, where minimal movements are usually the case, a proper view camera is overkill. It is true that some technical cameras have backs that can be pulled away from the body and wiggled around, this feature isn't a real substitute for independent decentering movements, tilt and swing. I'll say it again. You had a lapse and typed what you probably didn't mean.

Greater than any mechanical shutter's deviation from its marked value?

Absolutely. The Angenieux 8x8B (8-64/1.9) on my Beaulieu 4008ZM was t/3.3.

FWIW. The likes of Linhofs and MPPs are technical cameras; view cameras are usually lighter in weight and offer fewer/less movements.

 

Um, er, ah, Cowboy, I fear you have it backwards.

Year ago when I was accumulating lenses to use on my 2x3 Graphics my friend and neighbor Charlie Barringer -- he collected Zeiss gear and extreme optics, was co-author of the Zeiss Ikon Compendium -- remarked that he couldn't make sense of what I was doing and asked me what my rationale was. OP, I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish. What's your rationale? Back then, my goal was to accumulate good usable lenses for not much money.

What you will have to get used to is that you probably will not be using TTL metering. TTL metering is what hides the fact that you need exposure compensation. And TTL metering is the standard in miniature and even medium format photography. So stay alert and remember that you probably will need to correct a non-TTL metered exposure suggestion.

 

If wanted, TTL metering is available for 2x3 and 4x5 view cameras (Horseman Exposure Meter) and for 4x5 and up (Sinar/Gossen).

Thoriated glass is radioactive from the beginning. Hazardous if you keep it on or near your body permanently.

The browning can be reversed by exposing the glass to light.

Utraviolet light. Plain ordinary white light won't do.

Hmm. Lunasix 3 = Lunapro in the US. I have one. Gossen made an adapter that accepted two LR44s. Now discontinued, alas.

 

Back when, I bought two of the adapters, one for the Lunapro and another for a Canon S8 camera. Both did what they were supposed to do.

 

More recently I bought a Horseman Exposure Meter that wants 4 MR9s, Both of my Gossen adapters are in it and I use PX675 zinc-air cells in the Lunapro. I wrap them in paper to keep them roughly centered in the battery compartment. The cells pass battery check for about two months in it after the seals have been broken. There are worse punishments.

To expand on what the cowboy wrote, there are other 2x3 and 4x5 technical cameras with useful movements, even a few press cameras.

 

OP, if you're going to shoot roll film and don't want to futz with roll holders, you're stuck with a dedicated roll film camera -- they're made in formats up to at least 6x24 -- with either a single fixed lens or interchangeable lens-specific lens cones. These last can be very expensive.

 

The cost effective and more generally useful solution is a view camera, ideally (for me) a modular one but flatbed cameras work too, with a back that will accept a roll holder for the format you want. 2x3/6x9 technical or view camera if you want to shoot no larger than 2x3/6x9. If you don't want movements -- not all dedicated roll film cameras offer movements, and to use them you have to compose and focus on the ground glass which means remove/replace the back -- a 2x3/6x9 press camera will do. If you want 6x12, a 4x5 camera will do. For 6x17, 5x7. For larger, I'm afraid dedicated is it.

 

Re 6x12 roll holders. There are insertion types (Cambo/Calumet, out of production, $$$; Sinar, out of production but still $$$ and there are no spare parts; Linhof Techno Rollex, $$$$) and clip-on types (Horseman and all those Chinese things that seem to come from the same machine shop).

 

Technikas and some other technical cameras (Horseman comes to mind, after that do your own research) have rangefinders. RF cams are sometimes, not always, lens specific but you'll need a cam for each lens ... If you shoot that way, composing with movements is very difficult.

 

Given your desire for ease of use, you'd be better served with 35 mm or digital unless you have a mule or team of bearers to carry everything.

Hmm. The device is clearly marked "Springback." That's a very strong hint that it will accept only insertion type film holders.

 

The cowboy is right. If you want to shoot 2x3 and 4x5, get a 4x5 camera and 2x3 roll holder to fit it or get two cameras, one 2x3, the other 4x5.

Jean-phillipe, I remember when you cried poor. Congratulations on being able to afford such fine equipment.