butch_welch

Just to clarify where I am coming from, I researched the 6x17 market and decided after using a Fuji 617 to purchase a camera and a 90mm lens. The Linhof seemed like a better camera. When a mint used camera with both the 90 and 72 became available to me for less than the price of a new camera with the 90 only I bought it. Like a car, you really don't learn that much by a test drive around the block. After many months of driving it every day you really get to know the vehicle. I will shoot film through both lenses before I decide which to keep but I doubt I will use them long enough to truly know them both before I choose one and sell the other so i can get a longer lens. If someone has had long term experience with both these lenses their experiences could be eye opening. I especially want to hear about the 72, as I thought it would be too wide but really don't know that. I will not receive the camera until later this week.

I just bought a Linhof 617 with the 72XL and 90XL lenses. Anyone have

experience with these two lenses? Would appreciate your impressions.

I will probably only keep one of them and sell the other. I would

prefer to have the 250 and only one wide angle.

Call Jim Ormond of Western Bellows: Western Bellows Company, 7454 Henbane Street, Etiwanda, California 91739, phone number 909-980-0606. He made all of the bellows for my cameras (http://www.handcoater.com) and did a terrific job. Tell him I sent you.

First determine if the fog is also on the edges of the film or only in the image area. If the film edges that are covered by the film holder are fogged, then you either have a leaky holder or a problem in the darkroom while loading or developing (could be a leaky film box). If the edges are unfogged than you have a problem with the holder/camera back mating properly. I have always covered my holder and film back with the dark cloth before pulling the dark slide and leave it while exposing. Many times there is a lengthy wait before exposing while waiting for wind and light conditions to cooperate. If the back and holder are left uncovered, light leaks between holder and back can happen. Wood that is flat one day may be slightly bowed another when humidity and temperature have changed.

Does anyone know the future plans for Steve Grime's business? Other than Jim Galvin, is there anyone else who mounts lenses into

shutters?

I tested the 480 APO Nikkor on my 12x20. The image circle is plenty big but the area of sharp definition is much, much smaller. The corners on the 480 never came into reasonably sharp focus no matter how far you stop down, the edges are always mushy. The 450M is very good in the corners when you stop down to f:45-64.

The problem with your solution is that most films have less seperation in the shadow areas then the midtones. Your original negative will have 1.5 to 2 stops less exposure at the edges, depending on the lens and covereage. This will move the midtones at the edges down the film curve and you will have less tonal separation, and your shadows may slide off the usable portion of the curve entirely. A center filter used in the printing will not change this loss of separation, or shadows.

E-mail Robert Hockey at Strebor in Canada. They can make you a custom hard or soft sided case at a very reasonable price. They have made 3 cases for me (12x20, 11x14 and 7x17), all superb quality and inexpensive, under $300 US. His e-mail is rjhockey@strebor.com, tell him I sent you.

The area Jim has indicated with a red arrow shows jpg artifacting. This is usually caused by a too high compression ratio or re-opening and saving multiple times. Save your images as tiff files and only make one jpg file when you are finished adjusting the image.

Eric - I have a calibrated monitor and work with images on a daily basis for publication and desktop printing. Your images are too contrasty and a bit dark. If you have Photoshop, look at the levels in your file. The attached image shows your church image opened in Photoshop and the levels pallette open. The levels on your church image (levels below) shows information missing on the left (black) end on the right (white) end. Good tone distribution should look somewhat like the image levels shown in the upper right corner, with the curve narrowing to nothing at the left and right ends.

I am going to build one more camera that will interchange on the bed of

an 11x14 Phillips Explorer. I am leaning toward 7x17, but I am also

very tempted by 8x20. It would be helpful to hear other opinions and

preferences between the two formats and why. I realize the two formats

are nearly identical in shape and only differ in size, is the extra

size worth it? I have lenses that will work well with either format

(210, 305, 450, 600, 760 - all cover 8x20+ except the 210, which cover

7x17 well), so lens availability is not an issue. I am not concerned

with film availability. What are your thoughts?

If you are printing in silver, one of the best ways to increase highlight contrast is to print down and than bleach the print back. Paper has better separation in the midtones, so print the light tones as midtones and then bleach them back to higher zones. The lighter tones bleach faster, adding even more separation.

The easiest thing to do is find an 8x10 to 5x7 reducing back and then just cut the 8x10 plate down to the size you need to fit your camera.

I think the light fall-off you experience with the telephotos is caused by the iris placement in a telephoto design lens. The iris is usually placed at the nodal point of a lens, where it operates best. In a telephoto the nodal point is somewhere in front of the lens, so it must of necessity be placed much farther to the rear. My 1200EDT will cover my 12x20 wide open but when you stop it down past f:32 it starts to vignette the corners

I use the 110 on 7x11, 8x10, 9x9 and 5x12. It has an image circle of 13 inches which is enough to cover with almost no extra. The corners are quite good for contact printing when focused in somewhat and stopped down. For enlarging the corners may be too soft for some tastes. In any event the center filter is absolutely necessary on these formats due to light falloff.

The 3 digit number is stamped on each of the 3 pieces of the bed, This is because each bed is slightly different and will not line up with the bed of another camera. I bought many "donor" cameras for parts when I built my cameras and each bed has a 3 digit number stamped in the side of the bed hidden behind the gear track. I tried mating bed pieces with different numbers in many combinations. None of them ever fit well with pieces of another number. The thickness and centering of the tougue and groove in the ends varied greatly. For this reason it would be almost impossible to find an extension bed to replace a missing one. I have never seen the numbers on any other pieces except the beds, so I think it was only used to code the three bed pieces to each other. I have many parts left over. If you are missing any pieces I may be able to help with replacements.

Once pyro oxidizes enough, somewhere along in the development, it will stain anything it touches (look at the inside of your tubes after you have used them a while and you will see). The problem I have had is that the film will hug the tube over most of its length but the last 1/2 to 3/4 inch by the edge will straighten out and not grip the inside of the tube. The pyro will stain the back side of this area and can print with extra density at the edges. I have gone to using old negatives placed behind the film to protect the back side from this stain. After several uses the backing negs are very brown and stained. This stain would have been on the back of my negatives! I don't think you need to get the developer to the back of the film but you do need to clear the backing. It will not clear well in stop or fix (too acid), so I go to a water bath after development for 1-2 minutes and this clears the backing quite well (the bit of developer carried over helps provide an alkaline environment which helps the clearing)

First, thank you to all those people who responded positively, I

appreciate it. I know how much a 12x20 Korona or occasional Folmer-

Schwing go for. I know how much a new Canham, Wisner or Lotus sell

for, I investigated the Lotus before building the camera (Near $7000!)

I think my camera should fall somewhere in between. I like to think it

is worth more than a Korona, I put a lot of work and thought into it,

and I am not arrogant enough to think it is worth anywhere near the

value of a Canham/Lotus camera. But where does it fall in between? As

the responses show, most people, like me, have trouble putting a dollar

value on it.

 

To those people who expressed interest in purchasing the camera (I was

not cleverly trying to sell it on the forum), I am not ready to sell it

quite yet. When I am, I will put a post on the Photo.net large format

classifieds.

 

Finally, to those people who legitimately asked "You built a nice

camera why did you buy another?" I can only assume those people are

the lucky ones who can buy a piece of equipment and keep it for life (I

envy them) and don't suffer from the "equipment craziness" that some of

us less fortunate do. There were only a few 12x20 Phillips cameras

ever made (the exact number is not known by Phillips, and repeated

pleadings to make more have been unsuccessful). I have a friend who

has one and I have wanted one since seeing it. So I guess my only

answer is "I wanted it."

I recently bought a Phillips 12x20 camera, one of only a few made. I

have always wanted one. I now have 2 12x20 cameras so I have decide to

sell the one I built. But what is the value of this camera? How much

should I ask for it? I am too close to it to bo objective. Any input

or suggestions would be appreciated. There are pictures of the camera

at: http://www.mindspring.com/%7Ebutchwelch/1220.html. I can provide

the following additional information about the camera, which I wrote to

accompany pictures of the camera when I put it up for sale:

 

I have made a dedicated breadboard that the camera is designed to work

with. The breadboard will mount to any tripod head (has 2 1/4-20

mounting screw holes) but works exceptionally well on a Majestic gear

head, which I built it for. The camera is very, very rigid on the

breadboard, better than I anticipated. The breadboard includes a

built-in sliding extension bed. The camera has rise, fall, swing and

tilt on the front and swing and tilt on the rear. Front and rear tilt

are on axis, and the front tilt is separate from rise and fall. The

camera includes 3 new, unused, S&S film holders. The camera itself has

26.5" bellows draw. With the sliding extension built into the

breadboard it has 42 inches, useable with swing and tilt. To use the

extension you simply unscrew the lock knob for front swing and move the

standard forward to the extending part of the breadboard and screw it

on. It takes less than 30 seconds. The extension slides out on

aluminum T-tracks and locks in place wherever desired. The extension is

also very rigid. The camera weighs 20 pounds and is made of mahogany

with new bellows and easy open bail. All in all, this is really a nice

camera.

 

How much should I ask for this camera?

Cranes is a very easy paper to print on but does not yeild very good prints unless double coated. But due to poor wet strength, it is easy to abrade the paper on the second coat and have white flecks showing through. The brighter white version is called Distaff White. A much better paper is Fabriano Uno. It is brighter white, responds well to NA2 contrasting agent and is very smooth with good wet strength. You must first treat it in a 1% solution of oxalic acid to neutralize the alkaline buffers incorporated in the paper. I have been using it for palladium/platinum, gum-over platinum and mutli-layer gum. It has replaced my old favorite, Arches Platine/Cot320 as my standard paper. You can buy it at a great price from Daniel Smith in Seattle.

I think the Agfa lenses are Rodenstock APO-Geragons. By the way, the 305 G-Claron will also cover 8x20 well when stopped down to f:64.

Dan, I think that before Nikon's current line of large format lenses came out in 1980, Nikon sold the 450M as an APO Nikkor. It was only single coated at that time. You may have the identical lens to the modern 450M but only single coated. In Nikon's literature for the M series they describe them as being APO or near APO in color correction.

I have a 14 inch Veritar (actually I have 2, I need to sell one) and a 14.5 inch Verito. The Veritar is a newer lens in a lighter weight barrel. It is coated and has a real Alphax 5 shutter with real shutter speeds. The Veritar is an f:6 as compared to the Verito which is f:4 and in a rudimentary studio shuter which operates on B only (when they work at all). The Alphax shutter also has flash sync. From the looks of the elements, the Veritar is the same design as the Verito, just with a smaller max aperture so it will fit in the #5 shutter. The Verito is bigger, heavier and uncoated. I like the Veritar very much.

The lens manufacturers are quoting specs on the cricle of sharp definition within the circle of illumination. The circle of sharp definition gets larger as you stop down. The circle of illumination is the same size at all apertures, but becomes more even as you stop down. A plasmat design lens like the G-Claron or FujiA can be focused sharply across the entire circle of illumination, however due to curvature of field when you focus at the edges the center goes out, and when you focus in the center the edges go out. Frequently you can focus in between the center and edges and by stopping down get acceptable sharpness over a larger portion of the circle. Works great for bigger cameras and contact printing, may not work as well for enlarging. The 240 G-Claron and FujiA are almost identical designs both intended for flat field work. I have measured the circle of illumination on the Fuji at 16 inches or 400mm. It comes within an inch of the corners of 11x14 at infinity. Schneider is more conservative in quoting their specs than Fuji. I think the lenses are pretty comparable in sharpness and coverage. Personally, I would choose the multicoated Fuji in a smaller shutter over the G-Claron.

A 12 inch Golden Dagor will just cover 12x20 so might work OK on 8x20. The 305 G-claron will just cover 8x20. The 305 computar will cover easily and sharply to the edges (covers 12x20 with 3 inches of rise). Might be easier to check out one of these before going to the expense of having lenses manufactured.