andrea_milano

I am amazed about the learned advice which seems to be present on the

topic!I am not a lawyer, but I came across this problem several times

However, in Europe (UK, I am afraid, is a part of this too) Copyright

law extends to buildings too, and that means 70 years after the death

of the architect (the copyright will be owned for that time from

his/her heirs).

This is the theory, in practice, you can take a picture, get a permit

from the author , maybe pay a little fee for this, or risk that they

never know anything about it. Best asking a permit, my experience is

that reactions are almost always positive.

I was a little hasty in minimizing the issue but I believe that any

"old" lens would have been reduced the radiation by now we talk about

lenses which are 50 to 30 years old and I believe that modern

technology and norms are so stringent that nothing as bad as that could

be produced just in the name of low -dispertion!

However, thanks for raising the issue!

There is no form of "safe" radiation, any radiation is potentially

harmful, having said that, most watches give radiation off, your

television radiates too! To say nothing of magnetic fields generated

by high power electric lines!

No there is no reason to worry about using a lens which uses

radioactive elements.

The yellow coloration of some Pentax and other brand comes from old

adhesive which binds the elements and getting old changes color, can be

fixed.

<p>

Dont't worry, be happy!

Dave

<p>

I never had any trouble with Shen Hao or any other camera, I guess the

builder has a lot of building experience and knows what is doing, I am

sure that your advice will be most welcome but I tend to think that(I

hope that you don't take this as an unfriendly comment) he has more

experience in building cameras than you in using them.

<p>

I don't know where you can buy a Zone VI (new!mind you) for $1000(It is

unfair comparing a second hand price to a new price....), I know the

European Market very well and all the cameras below the $1000 are not

superior but rather inferior to the Shen Hao. Woodman-Horseman,

Tachihara , Wista don't offer the same performance (I owned all of them

so I should know....), the only one in this price range (about $1500)

which has similar or better features is the Walker Titan a very fine

product which I like very much (never got a penny from Mike

Walker....).

<p>

Zone VI isn't my favourite camera, the only thing I like about it is

the interchangeble bellows and the longer than normal extention, but at

least here it is expensive and hard to find.

<p>

Again buying a camera in China and importing it (if you don't mind me

saying so.....) without paying import taxes, airport handling duties,

transportation, insurances, bank fees and so on, is hardly

reppresentative of its real cost if you do all this things officially.

The $1000 one has to ask, to make all the fuss at least partly

worthwhile, for it, it is a fair and honest price.

<p>

<p>

I guess that you never questioned the buying-selling price ratio of

your chinese made Adidas's or Nike's.

My guess is that if you would you would, you then would hear a lot of

complicated explainations on how does a product get, from the pittance

which it is paid there, end up to be a luxury Item for which you need

$100 or more!

It is very rigid and informations should be still available because the

company still operates

Fatif is an Italian camera actually the only industrially produced

Italian Camera. It has been around for sometimes(its elegant design is

a product of the great '60/'70's designer Joe Colombo).

I have been usind and owning Fatif throughout my studies at the

European Institute of Design in Milan and it was the first Large format

camera I ever bought.

Depending on the Model(many different version have been produced

through the years) can be Good or very Good.

Thanks Geoffrey! It takes guts to try this on camera stuff but if it

works for a tripod why shouldn't it work on a camera? , however also

the point you make is very good, endorsing a product doesn't mean

necessarily that you are in anyway connected to this product, frankly

speaking I am sick and tired to have to explain everytime how the

story is and that my contribution to this forum have never been

dictated by personal interest.

<p>

Dave

<p>

I saw your pictures and everything seems to be in order, so the only

thing is to loosed the bolting lever and reposition it otherwise make

good use of the lifetime guaratee! I wish you all the best!

Dear contributors and some of the few remaining friends on the site,

<p>

I am very upset to have to defend myself from cheap accusations of

those who think that either me or Geoffrey Chen are financially

involved with shen hao (I do not own any Shen Hao shares.....), once

again I saw this camera at the fotokina, wanted to buy one for myself

because i liked it a lot, got in touch with Perry Wang and heard that

the minimum order was 4 pieces, I bought them and proceeded to sell

the other three and kept one for myself, that's all! It took almost 6

months to sell three cameras and could be hardly defined a source on

income. I did it because of the minimum order (which by the way seems

to be not applied to most sales I hear of on this forum......) and

because I really liked the camera and still do.

I hope to have been clear about this once and for all.

I have been accused to have interests in other companies such as

Bosscreen, the most careful readers would know that I gave address and

telephone number of the Dutch company where anybody can buy direct.

<p>

The Shen Hao.

<p>

<p>

when it comes to the specific problem which Dave described I can only

second the advice which Geoffrey gave, however, it seems to me that

loosening the retaining bolt and lever and repositioning the point of

maximum tightening shouldn't be very difficult because if you remove

the bellows the camera can be tilted giving access to the bolting

system, but I am not a mechanic , never will be, and if the task

should be too difficult I would dismount the camera back and send it

back to china where , I am sure, the matter will be resolved in 5

minutes.

<p>

About teak wood being waterproof.

<p>

Traditionally teak wood is used in many marine and tropical wooden

products, the reasons being those described by Geoffrey.

English parks have benches made of this hard and heavy wood because

they resist to almost anything the only thing is that the outside

tends to get grey-ish because of the action of rain, sun and chemicals

contained in the rain.Tht's the reason of extra coatins applied to the

wood. Teak is not dissimilar to other woods in this.

I don't know if I would go as far as to sray my camera with water, if

Geoffrey did it is his camera and why should anybody doubt it? I

personally would stick to more traditional cleansing methods.

The camera back.

The shen hao has really the same system used by most cameras and I

really don't understand Dave's doubts I have used a number of cameras

and although sometimes felt that a rotating back was an improvement in

the procedure I never damaged my cameras in doing so.

<p>

About other contributors who comment on the Shen Hao without having

used it or let alone seen it!!!!

<p>

Please refrain from making comments about something you know nothing

about! It is utterly disconcerning to read that Dave who owns a Shen

Hao would prefer a zone VI which he has never used for the same money!

Others second the decision but never saw a Shen Hao!

<p>

All this puzzles me!

I recall something on this very subject published on this site several

years ago, however. I my memory serves me right the ALPINA is a f or

f-1 with a different rail, (not the usual round one....) a flat rail

with a rack and pignon, the A-1 is the american version of the F-1. I

have seen and played with an Alpina.

before you or anybodyelse enbarks in any serious digitalization project

make sure that you have defined the criterias under which the project

has to take place, I mean define the technical aspects such as hardware

and output (which formats? TIFF, JPEG.....both), how to preserve(if

needed) the saved data(digital preservation is a huge issue), you will

find out that something which at first seems to be a straightforward

task will avalanche into a huge series of problems some of which have

no answers, all libraries of the world are facing the same problems and

getting in touch with the different digital departments will prove of

extreme value. Beware of those who play it down and bring the issue

down to simple hardware/software matters.

Major libraries in the world are dealing exactly with this and even

larger problems, some of them would take up outside projects, I work

for the Dutch Royal Library and we are involved in huge digitalizing

projects, even more so the Library of Congress. At the present time

there is an American organization called OCLC (I think, I am not sure

of the name) which should be able to support this project.

I have no reason to think that Maxwell's screens are anything less

than perfect, if on the other hand, you still prefer the bosscreen(my

choice because I am not aware of any European sources of Maxwell's

products), they are available in any size.

as far as camera go that can resist anything in terms of humidity the

Walker Titan beats it all, it is made of ABS and stainless steel

cannot beat this conbination, I would be more concerned about the

lenses though but I am sure that a good dose of silca gel can

prevent most damages. Good luck

Harry, I'd like to add another few lines to this discussion. Metric

backs are very precise due to their photogrammetry (measurements done

by use of a special camera where, given the focal length ,precisely

measured)capabilities, if you measure the picture you will know the

distance or any

other dimention of a given object. In this case the precision of a back

isn't so much used to keep the focus rather than keeping the shape.

If a camera points down or up, modifications of the film position

traslate into changements of the shape and therefore the dimensions

will be altered. Measuring on this bases will be unreliable.

Any other photographic application than Astronomic photography and

photogrammetry have no real use for such backs, but I might mistake

there.

Greetings to all!

Yes I agree that the camera has to be within reasonable limits in good

working order but my objection is more directed to those who

continuosly look for the "minutia" and loose sight of the great

picture, I mean if you are convinced that the GG is reasonably allined

to film (Holder and sheet film) does it matter that your next film will

be less deep and your film less thick(by how much!) when tightening

your focus knob takes you already out from what your eye might or might

not percieve as the right place to focus. the circle of confusion works

in different ways when you talk of a slide and judge the focus on the

original or a print and judge the focus on the print (resolving power

is much less and enlarging chanes the parameters so the circle of

confusion can be bigger), next to this points I like to say that if you

print anything with the offset system the "raster" will eat up much of

your unsharp bits (up

until a point), the best cure for this sophisms was to visit the

exhibitions of Dorothea lange and Henri Cartier-Bresson, many of the

pictures were soft focussed or bluntly not sharp, this took nothing

away from this extraordinary pictures(mostof these pictures appear

sharp on printed matter, the story is quite different when examining

the "real" prints. Gettig maximum results at f64 by shooting landscapes

or shooting still-lifes in the American desert sun is an easy task(I am

not sayng that this will make nice pictures) but even the holy Weston

wasn't immune from the unsharp image disease.

Anyway, life is a huge road and takes all sorts to travel on it, some

care about "minutia" some don't, the important thing is that you take

nice pictures.

Harry, as I said there are many aspects to this problem, however to

stay on the realistic side, focus ten times any objectin what you

think is the same spot (close ups show this even better....) and

measure the flange distance, you wil, very probably, unless you are

superhuman, find out that you will get at least 8 different

mesurements, all different with a difference within the 1/10 of a mm,

now this is caused by different bodily inaccuracies like your eyes

being more or less tired or your hands on the focus knob, in any case

comparing an ojective mesurement to a subjective "impression" of

sharpness introduces many more variants than the construction faults

or norms. What I mean to say is that applying this sort of

scientifical method to a piece of machinery (our body) which in the

end is in charge of making the choice of where to focus is nothing

more than a theoretical exercice, it is nice to know that you use

instruments which by far exceed the human capability of mechanically

stay within those limits. In the middle ages it was attempted several

times, by many illustruos and learned scholars, to determin the gender

of angels, the problem seem to interest the humans a lot, a conclusive

response was reached (male) by the force of general agreement rather

than the ultimate conclusive proof, observation.

Great thing this is! However is very expensive, if you want to spend

less and don't mind the larger gizmo, buy a Toyo(!!!!) it fits Horseman

perfectly. You still need a lope for precise focussing, landscape and

portraits present , in general, no problems at all, better associate

this to a Beattie or Bosscreen (+ Fresnel?).

This matter comes periodically up on the forum, many seem to be

concerned about it, however there are a number of old threads on this

Topic. One thought on this rises to my mind,this is that unless we are

talking of hypercritical focussing or badly faulty cameras, the matter

is of no importance at all, nevertheless, the theorethical aspects seem

to concern a number of aficionados, who am I to play down their doubts?

Many people have produced in the past and at present still do produce

adapters in the form of tubes in order to mount large format lenses on

medium format a typical example is the use of the "Imagon" lenses

(Mamya had also a sort of "official" adaptation for this famous "soft"

lens, However apart from the Genius Mr. Steve Grimes I should try to

find the address of a famous Italian repair shop "Benatti" they were

famous among many things also for this!

Before buying any XL lens check if it fits your camera, many field

cameras have a front standard hole too narrow to allow a 90XL or a

120Xl, can be nasty, I think that new series would address this

problem, no problems on a monorail of course!

Another thing, I own a Tachihara 8x10, it is a nice cheap camera but

the Shen Hao 8x10 is a much better camera I am afraid the Tachihara

(both models double and triple extention but surely the double) isn't

in the same league.

Instead of copper read brass, this was already stated as a translation

error bi Geoffrey chen who reads chinese and could read it on the

original pricelist, Hardwood (Teak) instead of hard wooden. Technical

datas are contained in the scans (available on this site) of the Shen

Hao brochure. Price, although I might agree that the GJ45-1 (to my

knowledge not anylonger produced, but I might mistake), is a little

more expensive than Tachihara, it offers though a graflock back where

tachihara doesn't, their top models are well placed into a market which

offers a large variety of choice, Shen hao being the last born has a

few teething problems (like language problems....) but it will soon

grow, at least I hope so.

Dear Matt,

sorry if I sort of overreacted to your entry but sometimes one reads

things which aren't there in some postings. I apologize for my hasty

answer!

However if I may spend an extra word for Shen Hao, the company is very

small and need to grow the production is very difficult because

involves some sub-contractors, their language skills are very poor and

I am afraid that if your e-mail hasn't reached Perry Wang, there is

nobody else able to answer you. In all Honesty even the comunication

with Perry is at times difficult but we all do our best. I know that we

in the west are used to different service or feedback but in reality

the intentions are good but fall a little too short.

Geoffrey Chen has had some experiences and he speaks chines, maybe you

can ask him (his address is under many entries concerning Shen Hao) to

do something for you.

Good luck.

Oh god what a pile of nasty remarks! However, The Shen Hao isn't

property of Seagull and they act as their go-between. Shen hao is

pretty much a one man band plus the services of mr. Perry Wang who is

taking care of the commercial part and the contacts abroad. Getting in

touch with them isn't always very easy , this of course has nothing to

do with the quality of their cameras but rather with the fact that not

everybody speaks english in this company (this is an understatement!).

However I have bought 4 cameras (as far as I know it was told me to be

the minimum order), kept one for myself and happily (for me and the

buyers) sold 2, the production might be suffering a bit under the order

which I know was placed from the American Importer to be. Concerning

the price, On this site it has been mention the buying price in china

but the selling price is, I am afraid higher, this due to various taxes

and transport costs, insurances, bank fees, airport handling fees and

last but not least the small importer profit(upon which we also pay

taxes), You are most welcome to get in touch with

http://www.camerachina.com

e-mail Perry Wang and he will be more than happy to put you in touch

with the American Importer.

Although I cannot be seen as totally indipendent on Shen Hao matters,

my long standing indipendent contribution to this site hasn't only

involved this brand, moreover I am a glad contributor to this site long

before I ever thought of buying myself a very nice chinese camera and

in doing so ended up in buying several. Being a professional

photographer, if I would apply the fee which I normally charge for my

services and expertise to all the time it takes to sell a camera this

would cost a lot more than it does so why do I do that? I guess because

I like this product, my job is taking photographs I love cameras and

own several from many different brands Shen Hao is only one of them.

Shen Hao means "good spirit", I hope this name can be an inspiration to

us all.