brian_ellis3

Is your Techhnika III a 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 or a 4x5? If it's a 4x5 Technika III no 47mm lens is going to work on it.

The camera is only the start. In addition to it if you're going to try to be in a position to photograph independently of the school's equipment you'll also need a lens (preferably two, one wide angle, one normal or longer than normal), tripod, dark cloth (a black tee shirt or something similar might do), light meter (in a pinch you could use your 35mm camera as a meter but carrying it around along with everything else gets old after a while), film holders (or Readyloads/Quickloads, which will double your film costs so holders will be less expensive in the long run), and a loupe (or good magnfying glasses). Then there are the not absolutely necessary but highly desirable things like filters, lens shades, etc.

 

I'm not trying to discourage you but I wonder if you really want to buy all this stuff at this point. You might be better off going with what the school can furnish until you see how you like large format photography and get the edge you seek by reading a book on large format photography, hopefully available in your school library or the local public library.

I used the BTZS program for quite a while until about four years ago. Perhaps it's changed since then but I don't recall it being limited to black and white zone system work. My recollection is that it could be used with color or black and white and could be used with either a reflected or an incident light meter.

 

I don't know how "elegant" other depth of field calculators are and I didn't use that feature a whole lot but when I did it worked very well and was very easy to use. It would either tell you the setting to use if you knew the depth of field you wanted or you could specify your settings and it would tell you what the depth of field would be at those settings. I also don't know about the price of other calculators such as the one you mention but of course the BTZS program does much more than calculate depth of field. It calculates exposure with your specified aperture or your specified shutter speed, with and without a flare factor, with and without reciprocity based on your particular film, with and without filters, with and without bellows extension, functions as a timer, stores all of your shooting data for later download, allows you to determine precise development times if you do your own processing, plus a variety of other things I don't now recall.

 

Since that program does everything you say you want (exposure calculation with multiple filter factors, bellows extension, and reciprocity with your choice of film and lens) I don't understand what your problem is with it (apart from its lack of "elegance" in calculating depth of field and perhaps the price), unless of course it has been changed and is now in fact limited to black and white zone system work as you say, which seems unlikely but I guess anything is possible.

I don't think your description of what you've read on the web is accurate. You do begin by metering a gray card (or any other smooth surface) for a correct exposure using the manufacturer's film speed, and you do then stop down four stops to place the card on Zone 1. But you don't then make further exposures at six stops below this number. Either you're misunderstanding what you've read or you're reading a zone system testing methodology that I've never heard of before.

 

The way it's usually done is to meter the card and set your aperture and shutter speed to make a correct exposure using the manufacturer's film speed. Then stop down four stops to place the card on Zone I and make an exposure. Then set the film speed to double the manufacturer's speed, meter the card and set the aperture and shutter speed to make a correct exposure at that film speed, stop down four stops, and make a second exposure. Then set the meter to half the manufacturer's speed, meter the card and set your shutter speed and aperture to make a correct exposure at that speed, stop down four stops, and make a third exposure. Go through this routine a couple more times with different film speeds in between half and the manufacturer's speed so that you end up with about five exposures, one at the manufacturer's speed, one at twice that speed, one at half that speed, then a couple others in between. Obviously you have to keep track of which negative was made at which speed. Then develop the negatives and proceed from there to determine the correct Zone I exposure with a densitometer or with one of the eye ball methods if you don't have access to a densitometer.

 

While I said to set the aperture and shutter speed for each exposure, actually you should begin with an aperture sufficiently wide open so that you can make all five exposures by changing only the aperture. Changing shutter speeds introduces an unwanted variable since shutter speeds are more likely to be off than apertures.

 

IMHO you should be aiming for a Zone I exposure, not a Zone III exposure. Testing for your personal film speed is the first step in zone system testing. You do it before you've done your development time test. So you don't yet know your normal development time, you're just using the manufacturer's suggested times. Since you don't yet know your normal development time, you should make exposures that are affected as little as possible by development. Zone I is virtually fully developed about a third of the way through the total time. Additional development beyond that point has no effect on Zone I as a practical matter. So by using Zone I as your goal you've removed development time as a factor in determining which of your five or so exposures is the right one. Zone III on the other hand is somewhat more sensitive to development time and will be affected by the total time more than Zone I. The difference may not be great but since it's just as easy to shoot for Zone I as Zone III, and since Zone I is less sensitive to development time than Zone III, why not use Zone I?

The only thing that surpises me is the fact that it was done badly. Otherwise it's just a continuation of the kind of thing has been going on since photography was invented. Timothy O'Sullivan et al moved cloud filled skies from one photograph into the bald skies of another photograph. Eugene Smith changed the direction of people's eyes so they'd be looking where he wanted them to look. The examples of using the darkroom to change "reality" could go on and on. So Meyerowitz and others who do the same thing aren't doing anything that is different in principle from that which has always been done.

 

However, I think the easy access to Photoshop and every photograph imaginable on the web has altered how we look at photographs. The really extensive alterations used to require two or more enlargers and a great deal of skill. Most people had neither. So we didn't look at unusual photographs and wonder if they were created in the darkroom, we figured the photographer just made a great photograph. But Photoshop has changed that. Now, when we look at a photograph that seems like it would have been difficult to get in the camera (e.g. the advertising photograph that shows a whale leaping out of water with a gorgeous sunset in the background) we figure that the photographer didn't make that photograph in camera, somebody just used Photoshop to move a whale and a sunset into an ocean photograph.

 

So while photography has never been about "reality," I think Photoshop and the ease with which it can be used to do what Meyerowitz has done here has made us much more skeptical of photography than we used to be.

"So do you recommend someone buy this feature or not."

 

I wouldn't make a recommendation, I simply expressed my own opinion. Anyone interested can agree or disagree as they see fit. Whether anything is "worth" the price being asked is obviously a personal decision, it will be worth the price to some people and won't be to others. I investigated this feature thoroughly at the time I was debating between an SVTi and an SU. I concluded that for me it wasn't worth the extra $1,000 cost so I bought the SVTi. I again considered an SU when I decided to replace the SVTi and came to the same conclusion again (so I replaced the SVTi with an SVTe rather than an SU). You think differently and that's fine. I have no problem with your opinion, I did object to your incorrect summary of what I said.

The suspicion is that it's a fraud since the seller has only one feedback, asks for payment by wire transfer, and is using the same picture that Adorama used when it sold the camera a couple months ago. The $1,000,000 bid is to alert the e bay security people, apparently they look into any item where there's a bid of $1,000,000 or more.

"He's absolutely right, it isn't worth the cost because it's too expensive, just like air conditioning and cruise control."

 

Of course I didn't say it wasn't worth the cost, I said I didn't think it was worth the cost. That's called expressing an opinion, not making a statement of fact.

 

Just like air conditioning and cruise control? Not exactly. I can't offhand think of a car maker that charges about the same thing for those two accessories alone as another car maker charges for an entire car including those accessories.

As others have said, your SVTi has base tilt, you just need to study the instruction sheet that came with the camera (or visit Ebony's web site) to learn how to use it. You would definitely lose something without base tilt. You need base tilt with the normal bellows in order to get wide angle lenses close enough to the rear standard to foucus. Without it you wouldn't be able to focus some wide angle lenses. But don't worry, if your camera is an Ebony SVTi it has base tilt.

 

Was the Canham a better choice than the SVTi? Who knows, that's a personal thing, only you can decide. Both are fine cameas. However, you wouldn't have achieved a significant weight saving with the Canham DLC, both it and the SVTi weigh around 4 pounds. I've owned both the Ebony SVTi and the SVTe. I preferred the SVTi because of the weight difference between it and the SVTe.

 

Is the asymetrical back worth the cost? I didn't think so, I think the asymetrical back is hideously overpriced. The Wehman 8x10 camera has an asymetrical back and cost of the camera - the entire 8x10 camera - isn't a whole lot more than the added cost of the Ebony asymetrical back alone. But obviously some people must think it's worth the cost, otherwise Ebony wouldn't make them.

 

Nikon lenses in general are very comparable to Schneider and Rodenstock lenses of the same design.

 

Unless you can find a local repair person you would send the camera back to the factory for any repairs that you can't do yourself. I had a defective bag bellows and sent it back to the factory for reprair. They fixed it and got it back to me in about two weeks, which I thought was pretty good. Some local repairs take that long.

I always found dodging and burning difficult to do with contact prints. I could do it o.k. when the area was clearly delineated and simple, e.g. burning the sky with a more or less straight horizon line, but I never acauired the skill to do the more intricate things that I could with an enlarger. While it's possible to see what you're doing, it isn't easy and you certainly can't see as well as you can with an enlarger where the tools are in between the light source and the paper. The reflections from the contact printing frame glass were an added problem. Back in the days when contact printing was the norm they made contact printing boxes with banks of lights that could be turned on or off. These still show up used occasionally on e bay.

If you need a flash meter, an incident meter, and a spot meter all rolled into one then the Sekonic is perfect. But having all those options and the other features of that meter just creates unnecessary complexity for no purpose if you don't need them. I use the zone system. I don't need a flash meter or an incident meter. All I need is a meter that gives me EV readings and that allows me to translate those readings into zones. The Pentax digital spot meter (which is still in production AFAIK, I believe it's the analog version that has been discontinued) does that easily, quickly, and accurately. I used to own a Minolta Spot Meter F, which like the Sekonic was more versatile than the Pentax but the versatility came at the price of added complexity that I didn't need. So I sold it about nine years ago and bought the Pentax, not because of its legendary status (which I wasn't aware of until now) but because it best fits my needs. It just depends on what you want in a meter.

I've bought four or five caps from Schneider. They cost either $10 or $20 depending on size. When I've ordered generic caps by mail they've never seemed to be the right size. It sometimes has looked like the diameter measurement given in the listings were for the outside diameter rather than the inside or something like that but whatever the reason several of them haven't fit. I'd go with Schneider and then you won't have to worry about fit.

 

I've also ordered custom caps from Grimes for old lenses when I was unsure of the diameter. They are unquestionably fine caps but the ones I bought cost about $50 IIRC and I didn't see that they were any better than the ones I've bought from Schneider.

Good grief, you mean that in addition to the Toyo and the Toho, there's also a Toko?

 

Toko isn't a particularly well known brand and I don't think you're likely to obtain a lot of detailed information here in response to your question. From looking at the (blurry) pictures it appears to be your basic inexpensive, light weight Japanese wood field camera much like the original Tachihara, Osaka, Nagaoka (sp?) and derivatives, which if correct would mean it's a double extension (about 12") field camera with front rise, fall, swing, and base tilt and back swing and base tilt. Given its light weight I'd guess it isn't the sturdiest camera around but the weight makes it nice if you hike long distances. The person who listed it doesn't provide enough information to make an intelligent buying decision. FWIW before I submitted a bid I'd ask him some very specific questions such as age, movements, bellows extension, detailed description of any defects including whether the bellows is light-tight (a new bellows would cost almost as much as the camera is likely to sell for), etc. Actually I wouldn't buy it except maybe for long-distance hiking and then only if the price was about $250 or less. Inexpensive Japanese wood field cameras such as this one sometimes are fine when new but can become loose with age and use so you really should be able to handle such a camera before buying it I think.

 

For an inexpensive wood field camera I'd be more inclined to consider a new Shen Hao or Tachihara, both of which are known quantities with many satisfied owners, rather than a relatively obscure used camera such as this one but that's just my opinion based on little information about this particular camera.

Maybe the Nikon T-ED lenses are considered to be "convertible" lenses but they work differently than the traditional convertibles like the Symmar, Cooke, et al others have mentioned in this thread. With the tradtional convertibles you buy one lens and gain additional focal lengths by removing the front or rear element of that lens. With the Nikon telephotos you buy one lens and then gain additional focal lengths by buying additional elements that replace the rear element of the original lens. So if you wish to use say a Nikon 360mm lens as a 500 and a 720 mm lens you buy the 360 lens and the two additional elements. Gaining additional focal lengths with the a Nikon T-ED lens seems more like adding a 1.4X and 2X extender than it does a traditional "convertible" lens but perhaps that's just quibbling over terminology.

"Are there other manufacturers that make convertible lenses other than Schneider?"

 

The Schneider convertible you're planning to buy was last made in 1972. Neither Schneider nor any other company that I know of currently makes convertible lenses except the triple convertible that Cooke recently introduced, which is a modern version of its old Series XV triple convertible. Unfortunately it costs several thousand dollars, I forget the exact price because whatever it was I knew I'd never pay it. In the old days convertibles were common and many companies besides Schneider made them. Turner-Reich, Cooke, and Wollensak come to mind, I know there were others but those are the ones that come to mind. At one time I owned a Wollensak 330, 510, 620 (approximate numbers)triple convertible. At its 330 length it was a very good lens for 8x10, at its converted lengths it was so-so - better than losing the picture entirely for lack of focal length but not all that good either.

A building manager has a legitimate concern about letting people up on the roof of their building, especially if they plan to go up there at night and stand at the edge of the roof making photographs. Building managers think it's risky stuff because it is. They don't need a law degree to figure out that there's no reward at all for them if they let you up there and the risk of major problems is huge.

I used to own this bellows. I didn't use it for metering, my hope was that it would replace the darkcloth. However, I found that I didn't like squinting through the small circular viewer, it reminded me too much of using a roll film camera. However the bellows itself worked well, it was just my personal preference that caused me to get rid of it.

I'm surprised that your 410 is sloppy, mine is very stable and very precise. My only complaint is that when I tilt the camera upwards (e.g. to get the top of a building in the photograph) the knob that is turned to allow the tilt bumps into the top of my Gitzo 1325 tripod and limits the backward tilt to about an inch. There's a way around the problem but it's kind of a pain. Otherwise the head is great.

Watch out for SatinSnow. I waited a month for mine and when it arrived it didn't have the corners cut as I had specified and it was too short to fit my camera. I sent two e mail messages about these problems and received no response to either, no "sorry about the problems," no "we'll send a correct one right away," no "refund is on its way," just total silence. I have the impression that this is an outfit that was good when it was small but that has been unable to cope with its success.

Go to www.butzi.net, click on the "articles" tab at the top of the home page, scroll down to the article dealing with loading film holders. It contains photographs showing the process step by step. However, the "simplest system" is the Kodak Readyload or Fuji Quickload systems. With these you don't need to load the film yourself, various films are furnished in light-tight envelopes that you insert in a Readyload or Quickload holder. They will roughly double your film costs but they don't require any loading, are dust-free, and the negative doesn't need to be removed from a film holder and stored before delivery to a lab, you just give the lab the envelopes.

Many e bay sellers claim ignorance of their equipment so that when there's a problem and the buyer complains they can say "I told you I didn't know anything about it." A common ploy that I suspect on many of these so-called "estate" sales or "I'm selling this camera for a friend, I don't know anything about it" or "this was my father's camera, it looks great but I've never used it myself, sold as is."

Since you have no problems outdoors with landscapes it doesn't sound like you have a mechanical problem. My guess is that it's a simple depth of field problem. You're using a very long (14 inch)lens only five feet from the subject and you're only stopping down to F22. I haven't done the math but it seems to me that you're not stopping down nearly enough to gain the needed depth of field. When you're that close to the subject and using that long a lens depth of field is razor thin. I'd guess that the problem doesn't arise with your landscapes because you're farther away from your subjects and that longer lens-to-ubject distance helps with depth of field.

 

I could of course be wrong, it's sometimes difficult to diagnose problems without actually seeing what someone is doing, but I'd suggest you try stopping down to F45 or F64 and see if that doesn't improve things. And no, diffraction won't be a problem at those small apertures with a 5x7 negative and a normal portrait size print.

The BosScreen replaces the ground glass and it's very simple to install on a Deardorff, just remove the four little clamps that hold the ground glass in place, remove the old glass, drop the new one in place, screw the clamps back on. I used a BosScreen with my previous Deardorff and liked it a lot. However, you may not be able to get one or, if you do, it may involve a long wait. I tried to get one through normal BosScreen channels (Ted Bromwell at Bromwell Marketing) and he wasn't able to obtain one. After waiting about a year I cancelled the order, then was lucky enough to stumble across one on close out from Badger.

The Tachihara doesn't have front shift so I don't see that its absence in the Deardorff is relevent in deciding between the two cameras - you won't have front shift with either. The Tachihara does have front swing, some Deardorffs don't. Did you perhaps mean no front swing in the Deardorff rather than no front shift? They weigh about the same (Tachihara about 11 pounds, Deardorff about 12 pounds). I've owned two 8x10 Deardorffs and one 4x5 Tachihara. All three were very nice, very serviceable cameras for most purposes. Assuming equivalent condition the deciding factor for me as between these two would be the bellows length - only about 22" with the double extension Tachihara vs about 31" with the Deardorff.

I owned a Technikardan briefly. While I didn't care for the camera for other reasons I didn't find it particularly "fragile." Of course it isn't a "clam shell" design so the bellows (folded up), standards, and rail are exposed and perhaps face a greater risk of damage for that reason. But it does consist of six pounds of mostly metal parts so how fragile could it be? Did your friend explain the nature and circumstances of the "one knock" that bent his three? And not to criticize your friend but if he finds them all that fragile why has be bought four of them?