peter_caplow

I have a brochure on the 970 which says that the 105 super and the 150 Super are the two lenses with sufficient coverage for 4X5. It also states: "However, the camera movements will become difficult at infinity distance."

 

Peter Caplow

I recently purchased a beautiful 970. The only significant difference

of which I am aware between this model and the 980 or 985 was the lack

of right/left shift on the 970 lens standard. You can get a little

bit of shift by swinging the lens and the back in the same direction

but it doesn't amount to much and the fairly extensive front rise

can't really be used as a substitute (by turning the camera on its

side) because the Horseman prior to the LH-R lacked the rotating back.

You really have come across an obscure camera. I have a Horseman 970 and have been trying to find out as much as I can about the brand but the Convertible is a real oddity. Your question is only the second reference I have seen to this model. The first time was at a recent photo swap meet in Minneapolis. A seller had one which I examined. It was a small thin camera with a permanently attached wide angle lens and came with a Horseman 6x7 roll film back. I think the asking price was something like $600. The surprising thing to me about this camera was how cheap it looked. Everything else made by Horseman is of such high quality that I was a little shocked to see such an apparently junky item with the Horseman name on it. As I recall, it had no rangefinder but depended on the extra depth of field from the wide angle lens to cover any error in scale focusing it. I suppose that it has some utility in that it should be capable of producing a high quality, 6x9 negative from a very small camera with a very wide angle of view, but I was so turned off by the appearance of the thing that it didn't impress me at all. I have no idea what it's worth but I wouldn't pay a lot for it. The market for Horseman is very thin and it's difficult to get a reasonable percentage of the original purchase price when selling a used one.

 

Peter Caplow

Ross can be reached at adelheid@juno.com.

 

Peter Caplow

I'm sure the "D" is like my Yashica 635. I also have a Kalloflex that works the same way. They come with a knurled ring that screws onto threads around the base of the shutter release plunger. Yours may have been removed and lost, in which case you will just see the bare threaded part with no ring. To use a cable release, you must buy an adapter which is a small cylinder that screws over the plunger using the aforementioned threads and has a threaded hole at the end for a cable release. The plunger on the cable release presses directly against the shutter release plunger to fire the shutter. I found mine at a used camera store in Minneapolis, MN called Liberty Photo. I'm sure they have more of them if you can't find one anywhere else.

 

Peter Caplow

I had a very similiar problem with an M3 Leica. The cause was

lubricant that had gotten onto the rubberized surface of the 2nd

curtain making it tacky. The delay in the release of the 2nd curtain

was barely noticeable if I fired the shutter right after it was

advanced because the sticky surface didn't have much time to adhere to

itself but the longer the shutter sat after it had been wound, the

worse the problem became. Don Goldberg, in Wisconsin, replaced the

curtain and did some cleaning and adjusting (but not a full CLA) for

$175.00.

Kodalux used to mount 2 1/4 square slides free when you used one of their processing mailers. They were cardboard mounts but they were well done and very convenient and the price was right. A few years back, they dropped the service entirely and, for a while, I tried heat seal cardboard mounts that I sealed using my wife's steam iron (without the steam). They always warped badly and it was such a nuisance to mount slides that I went back to 35mm for the next few years. Lately, I have come back to MF and have tried three brands of glassless plastic slide mounts. The Gepe and Wess mounts were purchased from B&H and Clark mounts are available here in Minneapolis from a local processor called Pro-Color at about $.41 each. My least favorite are the Wess. After placing the slide into one side of the mount, they fold shut like a book and are held closed by an overlapping catch on one side. I don't like them because they are so thick. The Gepes aren't bad. They come in two pieces and one side has a metal insert with tabs on opposite sides to catch the slide. Then the other half is snapped over the first half. They are thinner than the Wess mounts but not as thin as the Clarks. If I mount a slide and after viewing it a few times decide it's not worth a $.41 mount, getting them out of the Gepe is a bit of a hassle. My favorite (by a small margin) are the Clarks. They are one piece mounts with a slot on one side into which the slide is inserted. They are very thin but the slides seem to stay just as flat as in the other mounts. They are held in the mount quite securely just by friction. I don't know of a mail order source yet but you could try contacting the manufacturer directly at: Photo Plastic, Intl., Chicago, IL. For me, there's nothing quite like a projected 2 1/4 slide.

 

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Peter Caplow

I've discovered the answer to my own question. By fooling around with the Kalloflex and running test rolls of exposed film through it, I've managed to get the film advance to function properly (just like a Rollei) intermittently. I don't think it's going to work consistently though so I'll have to return it.

 

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Peter Caplow

Is anyone on this list familiar with the Kalloflex (a TLR that was made by Kowa in the 50's)? I have just bought one (with a return privilege) that doesn't seem to be working correctly. It appears to me that it should advance the film very much like a Rolleiflex by rotating the crank clockwise until it stops and then counter-clockwise until it stops again. On this particular camera, the crank just keeps turning clockwise indefinitely. The frame counter advances steadily and I suppose I could stop cranking when it reaches the next number but I have a very hard time believing that this is the way it's supposed to work. Anyone out there actually know how it should work?

 

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Peter Caplow

1) Rolleicord V

 

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2) 1954 - 1957

 

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3) Don't really know but I would expect they are.

In his lengthy response to this question, Sergio Ortega stated, in part:

 

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"On the downside, leaf shutter-only cameras give increasingly less accurate exposures as the shutter speeds get faster and the apertures get wider. This is also due to the concentric nature of the leaf shutter blades' travel. As the shutter speeds increase and the apertures widen, certain sections of the film area receive increasingly more uneven exposure. This is much the same phenomenon as light fall-off or vignetting. Since the leaf shutter's blades linger longer at the edges of the image area, the central area of the film area gets more light than the film's edges, as the apertures get larger."

 

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I'm surprised that no one objected to this statement, which appears to be saying that a combination of high leaf shutter speed and large aperture causes vignetting. The fact that the leaf shutter's blades linger longer at the edges of the image area does not mean that the edges of the film get less light. Since a leaf shutter is right at the center of the lens, the degree of opening affects the film in about the same way the degree of opening of the aperture does. The total illumination is less at a smaller opening but the entire picture is affected evenly. Vignetting at wide apertures is a function of lens design and is not affected by the physics of leaf shutter design.

 

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Peter Caplow

Can anyone explain how an extinction meter works? I did an Alta Vista search and the best answer I came up with was:

 

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"A type of exposure meter that artificially reduces the light admitted in a sequence of known fractions, until a value is reached that is equivalent to the proper exposure."

 

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This didn't add much to my understanding.

 

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Peter Caplow

Michael,

 

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I have been taking 6X6 slides off and on for 30 years now. Until about 7 years ago it was always Kodachrome 64 and I would use a Kodalux mailer for processing and free mounting in cardboard mounts. At that point they stopped offering mounting and I looked around for some alternative way to get my slides mounted. The only options I ever found were a) Having our local pro lab put them in plastic mounts at about double the cost of unmounted processsing or b) Buy mounts and do it myself. For a while I used the heat seal cardboard mounts but they were time consuming to use (they needed to be ironed to make the seal) and they tended to warp and curl like pototo chips. More recently I have tried two types of plastic mounts. The first type was the slip in type that I bought at the aforementioned pro lab. I found them tedious to use because the film would often catch on imperfections in the mount and resist going in all the way. For the latest roll of film, I used Wess folding glassless plastic mounts (6X6 DGX001) which cost $6.25 for a box of 20 at B&H. (You would want the 6X45 DGX002 which sell for the same price.) I like these a lot. You can just use a sharp pair of scissors to cut the slides. Cut them right in the sleeve to avoid touching the film more than necessary. Then wear a disposable vinyl glove on one hand to insert them into the mounts which then fold closed and snap shut. They're kind of expensive but you don't need to mount every picture you take; just the ones worth showing. I'm been assuming here that when you said slides, you were planning on projecting them. For that, you will of course need a projector but that's a whole other story.

 

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Peter Caplow

I am assuming that you retained ownership of the image. That being the case, I would suggest that you loan the client the negative on the condition (in writing) that he split the $10,000 prize with you 50/50 if the picture wins the contest.

I bought a pair of the MR-9 adaptors from C.R.I.S. for my Gossen Luna-Pro. They were slightly fatter than the original mercury cells and I couldn't get the cover for the battery compartment to screw back on. I could catch a thread on the cover and make the electrical contact but I didn't do any extensive testing to see if the meter was accurate. However, the battery test indication was way off. I tried the MR-9's in a Minolta SRT-202 and a meter that attaches to a Leica M3. In both cases, the battery test was off and the meter needles wavered a lot when a reading was being taken. I returned the MR-9's to C.R.I.S. and they refunded the purchase price but not the S&H.

Aside from the fact that it's big and clunky compared to a Hasselblad or Bronica but takes the same size negative, the Exakta 66 III has a pretty good reputation from everything I've read. Probably the biggest disadvantage is that it's available new in this country ONLY from Cambridge Camera Exchange, the biggest crooks in the business. If you want to know more about their business practices, check out the Camera Shop Postings at:

http://db.photo.net/classified/ViewNtoNInOneCategory?subcategory_1=Camera%20Shops

 

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or the Mail Order Survey at:

 

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http://math.liu.se/~behal/photo/photographic_mail_order_survey

A number of times in MFD it has been asserted that larger negatives provide "smoother tones" or "better tonality". Can anyone tell me what EXACTLY is meant by these expressions?

Paul:

 

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I also have a Weston Master III that I bought for a small amount of money (at a camera swap meet). It works as follows: moving the small tab that sticks out from the silver dial adjusts the film speed setting which can be read though the small opening in the red dial. Then take a reading by aiming the meter cell on the bottom of the meter at the subject. If the light levels are high, leave the perforated cover over the selenium cell in place; if the the light is dim, then open the perforated cover. The meter needle will point to a number on the meter scale. The range of numbers for bright light is 25 to 1600 and for low light it goes from .2 to 50. Use the turned up tabs on the black wheel to aim the large silver arrow at the corresonding number on the outermost part of the dial. You can then read all the correct exposure combinations off the silver (shutter speeds) and black (f stops) dials. In other words, a shutter speed that lines up with an adjacent f stop should provide the right exposure.

 

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My meter appeared at first to be working correctly, but it was in fact no longer functional because the selenium cell had weakened with age. If you want to do a quick test on yours, open the perforated cover and point the meter at a very bright light source. If the needle fails to reach the right side of the scale (50) then it is defective. If it passes that test, then find a light source that gives a reading in the 25 to 50 range. Without moving the meter, close the perforated cover and see if it gives the same reading on the high range scale also. If it doesn't, then something is wrong since a brightness level of say 50 in the high range should be 50 in the low range as well.

 

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Peter Caplow