struan_gray

I am thinking of buying the Elinchrom Varistar umbrella-style softbox and am wondering how large an effect the dedicated wide-angle

reflector has. Partly because I am not averse to saving money, but also because while the brolly box can be fitted into my existing cases,

the reflector certainly can't, so even if I buy it, I'm unlikely to want to take it with me when I travel.

I have played around with wide-angle and telephoto Fresnel adapters on a hammerhead flash firing into a translucent umbrella, and know

that a

useful variation in the falloff and harshness of the light can be got by changing the spread of the flash output inside a shoot-through

umbrella. But I also know that for now at least I will want to fill the Varistar, and so I am really interested in the difference between using

the 24

cm wide angle reflector, and no reflector at all. My gut instinct is that the reflective backing on a brolly box will do most of the job of the

reflector, and that at a worst case I will lose a bit of light.

Any comments from Varistar users, or from those with similar brolly boxes like the Westcott Halo?

There is a guy who obviously had a bunch of these made up and is selling the spares on

eBay. This is a finished auction, but they turn up again at regular intervals:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/L39mm-to-Copal-1-reverse-adapter-for-Rodenstock-ELs_W0QQitemZ130119394711QQihZ003QQcategoryZ30076QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Take a look at the postings by Micheal Gudzinowicz and Sandy King in this thread:<p>

<a href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.photo.equipment.large-format/

browse_thread/thread/3701c61d3b37b6d4/890c23f5ddf36f2e">http://groups.google.com/

group/rec.photo.equipment.large-format/browse_thread/thread/

3701c61d3b37b6d4/890c23f5ddf36f2e</a>

It is very common in Sweden to write dates as yymmdd with no

spaces or other seperators. Today's date would be written

061009. The format is used in official correspondance, technical

labels and serial marking, and in private letters.

I don't know when the 500 CM was discontinued, but is it

possible that you have a body made on Sept. 18th 1997 and the

label was misprinted? You can check against the VHPICTURES

code in the serial number.

Vivek, that's why I mentioned those two applications. It's natural to assume that a Zeiss

Planar will be sharp by photographic standards. But maybe not.

I'll be interested to hear what Klaus finds out in testing.

The diagrams of lithography steppers I have seen have lenses that are considerably more

complex, bulky and heavy than this. I sincerely doubt that this was used for UV

lithography in semiconductor manufacturing.

The coating is golden at extreme angles. Note that in Klaus' photo you cannot see the

aperture: all the golden rays are non image forming. Standard single-coating usually

looks blue at the same sorts of angles, but nobody suggests they cannot pass blue light.

I would guess this lens was used for high fidelity UV projection. Either for direct plate

making for a printing press, or for production of accurate blueprints or manufacturing

templates from a master original. A similar but custom-made lens was on eBay.de

recently, and its stated use was direct exposure of silkscreen masks. Whether for textiles

or circuit boards I do not know.

<p>For me, the word "Portrait" has more to do with how the photograph is presented than

how

it is taken. By using that label, the photographer tries to tell the viewer how to approach

the image, and in the usual tradition at least, promises a side helping of truth and

revelation along with the visuals.</p>

<p>I recently was loaned a 'portrait lens' (a Verito), and despite not really liking that

glowing

misty-eyed matron look, had a lot of fun mucking about with my kids and the scrag end of

a pack of Type 55 Polaroid film. The half-second expsoure, the collaborative feel, the way

that LF mixes in-and-out of focus, and the intimidating aspect of a whopping big black

lens all contributed to the final images. They won't win prizes for sharpness or vision, and

I may be a tad biased about the loveliness of the models, but the photographs are bursting

with character.</p>

<p><a href="http://web.telia.com/~u46133221/mutual_portraits/

index.htm">web.telia.com/

~u46133221/mutual_portraits/</a></p>

Edmund Optics sell a wide range of lenses for what they call "machine vision" which

include f2-ish lenses optimised for macro applications with focal lengths as short as 7

mm. There are also several ranges of c-mount lenses from their house brand or Schneider

with apetures as wide as f1.4 which they say are suitable down to 1:2 magnification. They

also have a wide range of adapter rings, spacers and other dohickeys.

www.edmundoptics.com

I use the Lee system, but I don't have or use many filters. The resin ones I do have seem

pretty tough and I've cleaned fingerprints and dust off them just as I would a glass filter.

Much more tolerant than gels.

The lens cap is an idea I've bugged Lee and Robert White about ever since I got my system

and I'm delighted they're now on offer. The lens adapters provide a filter thread the same

size as that on the lens, so it is possible use a spring-loaded clip-in lenscap. All my LF

and MF lenses

have push-on caps and those become useless once the adapter is in place. The Lee

cap will seal against dust a bit better than a clip-in, and it's nice too to have a single

lenscap size for all your lenses - makes it easy to carry a spare.

I don't see why the translucent cap shouldn't work like the Expodisc for incident readings,

but I would expect the reading to drift with time as the cap got grubby. Also, the Expodisc

is textured to read from many angles like a dome on a meter, while these are flat - good

for studio flash, but you'll need to interpret the readings for outdoor use.

I have two 18" Wray APO-Lustrars. One has a bust iris, but the other is my most used lens

on 4x5. I don't know the history and ins-and-outs of the plain Lustrar, process Lustrar,

series Lustrar, but all the 18" ones I've seen in the flesh and on eBay have looked like mine

whatever the name. They are dialyte (4/4) types, and although they throw a large circle of

light - mine illuminate my 12x16 ground glass - for enlarging don't expect much useful

coverage beyond their focal length.

They are sharp enough for me at infinity. I see things on my negs that I never expected

would be resolved. I am sure a modern plasmat would beat them, but modern plasmats

cost considerably more money.

Mine are not that large, at least compared to similar length APO-Ronars and Nikkors.

Those always seem to fill up a Sinar-sized lensboard, while the APO-Lustrars will fit on a

Technika board.

Buyers' guide: don't pay much, mine were 10 and 80 pounds. Watch out for corroded

aluminium barrels

and steel iris blades. The coatings are often mottled and blotchy, which doesn't seem to

have

spoiled my two for use, but watch out for flare.

Incidentally, if it is a telecentric you won't be able to focus on anything at infinity. Also, if

it covers 6x6 the 7:1 ratio means it is designed for photographing an area less than 1 cm

in diameter. More likely, and sadder for you, it's designed to image something roughly

the size of its own barrel diameter onto a C-mount sized chip. Still, use it backwards and

you have the ultimate lens for small insects and jewels.

If you are lucky you have got hold of a telecentric macro lens that will cover 6x6.

Telecentrics are usually cited as the ultimate oddball otical design. They are used for

macro photography, or at least non-infinity photography, and have the property that all

the parts of the image field are seen 'head-on'. See this page for some more detail:

http://www.edmundoptics.com/TechSupport/DisplayArticle.cfm?articleid=239

Telecentrics tend to be specced for a particular magnification ratio and f-number, which

rings a bell with your lens. They also need to be at least as big as the image field, so for

6x6 that means the element facing the film needs to be roughly 80 mm in diameter -

again, your lens is a biggie.

Usually, the lens will also be specced for a particular working distance. You don't know

yours, and if Leitz Canada can't or won't say you'll have to muck about to find out exactly

where to put the camera in relation to the lens. The best way to do this would be to

mount the lens and an SLR body at either end of a LF monorail camera and play with their

spacing and that of a suitable target until you get a good image. Once you know the

flange focal distance you can get a machine shop to make a barrel - subsequent focussing

best being done by moving the whole camera and lens back and forth with respect to the

subject.

So, before you scratch the coatings too much with your paperclips, it might be worth a bit

of further investigation.

I have a 121mm Super Angulon which is listed as being in a "0+1" shutter. The shutter is

a size '0', but the lens cells do not screw into it directly. Instead, the shutter is mounted

inside a larger-diameter barrel (which has cutouts to access the controls) and the cells

mount into that. There are always one or two 121 mm Super Angulons on eBay.de at any

given time, so you can see pictures of the setup there.

My guess is that "0+1" is Schneider's way of specifying this arrangement, which I assume

is done to prevent the large cells from placing too much stress on the shutter threads.

My lens came off a top-hat lensboard for a Sinar monorail with a 52.5 mm hole. Robert

White cut a similar custom hole in one of their generic Technika boards for a small fee. No

biggie if you have the lens in your hands and a caliper to do the measuring.

It's not LF, but there's a franchise called Venture that has been surprisingly successful in

getting people I know to stump up for portraits. People who otherwise expect their

photos to come with the school report or free with a frame from Ikea. The look is

deliberately commercial, and they've perfected a way of hiding the production lines and

making clients feel like they're being wooed rather than processed.

www.thisisventure.co.uk

Alton, the way different cultures handle and think about love, sex and the differences

between men and women is fascinating, but my impression of Igor's work is that he is

conforming strongly to a western genre, so until he pops up and tells us all about his

anthropological work among the more exotic tribes of Siberia I'll keep him filed as

'unoriginal'. One example: there are not many faces in his pictures, but those that are

there are certainly not what I would regard as typically slavic. They cleave to what I

regard as the mainstream US perception of youthful, healthful beauty.

Note that 'unoriginal' doesn't mean 'bad', or even 'merely technically proficient'. For me

though, it does mean 'dull'. I'm sure Igor can live with the disappointment :-)

I live in Sweden, where nakedness is often quite successfully divorced from sex, at least to

the extent that swimsuits or ballgowns are divorced from sex. "The Directors" epitomises

the usual sniggers this simple fact usually induces in Americans, but even for me (a Brit) it

can still cause unexpected culture clashes after many years of living here.

I was given my high-power magnifier by a visiting japanese professor. About 10x, a

cutaway plastic skirt so you can find focus easily but tilt in the corners, and very light and

small. He'd bought a bunch cheaply in a novelty store in Shinjuku, sold as 'wafer

inspection loupes'.

Before that, I used the 18 mm normal lens off my Pentax 110 SLR. These sell very

cheaply, even at premium used stores like KEH, and are very reasonable quality - I've tried

it as an eyepiece on my telescope and microscope too and it's not too shabby. There's a

50 mm too if you want lower magnification with less bulk than a lens off a 35 mm camera.

I can live with being picked on - it's better than being ignored. No offense taken.

Tom said it all, but here's my take anyway.

I don't think nudes are or need to be about sex alone, but for all but the most holy and

strong willed viewers naked just can't help also being nekkid, if only as a secondary or

subconscious factor. I like sex as something you do with someone, not to someone. Igors

pictures are the latter - the women are there to be looked at with impunity, with no

requirement to examine or justify your own motives for looking.

The women may be strong, but they're gym-bunny strong. Not many athletes look like

this, except perhaps middle distance runners and they as a rule tend to wait and get the

boob job done when they've stopped competing. So what? Well, the women in these

photos have a body style that is explicitly governed by what "looks good", rather than, say,

what propels you most efficientlly through the water or down the back straight. I'm not

dissing the effort or intentions of the women in Igor's photos, but by using them rather

than other possible 'strong women' he gives the viewer an easy ride.

I don't want to butress my reaction to Igor's nudes with a mess of feminist rhetoric, but it

would be trivially easy to do so. My main objection is personal: there's no character in

these women, and I like women of character. Also, there's no sense that the photographic

process has created anything other than a record, and entry to my photographic pantheon

demands a bit more than that.

FWIW I did like one of the ones with the camera when I came across it on it's own. But

viewed with the rest of the folder it lost a lot of it's potential bite - the wry digging I saw in

the individual image was my own projection.

I don't like 'Nude Photography'. It's conventional to the point of stasis, unthinking in its

choice of models, environments, props and presentation and with a very few

honourable exceptions, devoid of ambiguity, personality, feeling or flair.

My exceptions are Penn's Earthys, some of Weston's work and various odds and sods

scattered across the internet: a certain t. meyer's Erotic Aftermath for example.

Almost all else reminds me of sickly late romantic academic sculpture. Just as most

landscape photography is stuck in the conceptural world of Bierstadt and Church, the

usual nude is a C19th bit of coy pidgeonholing. Nude women are meek and ready for

projection; nude men are muscular christians who just happen to have mislaid their

trousers.

Igor's nudes are of a high technical standard, and I agree with Mike that he's a 'Good

Photographer', but he's still just issuing the same old licence to stare. The women may be

physically strong, but they're mental and emotional wimps. The Olympics had women's

weightlifting, shot put, shooting and fight sports, all performed to a high level, but I don't

suppose any of the medallists will be getting a call from Igor any time soon.

The unexamined life is supposedly not worth living. Most nudes are lifeless, and definitely

not worth examining.

Still, all is not lost, even here at photo.net. Have you seen Jane Aaron's stuff? Wit and

pubes in equal measure - time for a posse of Notables to put her in her place.

Jean-Louis, I bought my quickchange holder and cartridges from Andre Mouton at Taos

Photographic (taos@wanadoo.com) a year or so ago. Christoph Greiner

(chr.greiner.photo@t-online.de) also had them.

Calling him a photographer is a bit of a stretch, but looking at

Andy Goldsworthy's work always gives me more to think about

than most of the stuff produced by more craft minded artists. I

have his book "Time" which has a useful summary of his career

as well as photographs of works which explicitly address ideas

related to time and its passage.

Huw Price's "Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point" is worth a

read too.

A lot of organic molecules will develop silver halides, and the

early photographic literature is full of oddball recipies and

formulea. The real problem with kitchen kemicals is finding a

good *fixer*. See "The Killing Fields" for further details.

Vit. C works well, but is susceptible to poisoning by high metal

content in your water, and is itself easily broken down by heat,

light, mechanical agitation or strong acids or bases such as

residual stop bath or fixer.

I don't think the degredation wil be *that* bad. Not unless you

are using a lens that is known for residual errors like a Dagor or

one of the older classics. But you won't get as good results as

you would with two MF lenses in parallel. The beauty of the

splitter approach is that you can play around with kiddie

periscopes and get reasonable results with little financial

commitment.

One solution to the shutter problem would be to settle for 2"

images side-by-side on 4x5" film or a pair of 645 frames on

rollfilm. A speed graphic or similar shutter would then expose

both images the same way. With a splitter you could also use a

curtain shutter behind the lens - look for D. Foschi's posts about

mounting a Speed Graphic shutter behind large lenses.

What's the application? It almost sounds as if you're trying to do

high-speed stereo photogrammetry. Regular stereo imaging

can tolerate a fair amount of slop.

<p><center><img

src="http://www.sljus.lu.se/People/Struan/pics/cuteorwhat.jpg"><

</center></p>

<p>Four months is tough - you'll have a hard time stopping them

from toppling sideways out of the frame or onto each other. My

twins were a bit older when this was taken, but it shows the

technique.</p>

<p>Prop them up at a 45 angle to avoid that goggle-eyed jowley

look you get when they're lying down. If they're older you can get

them to sit up, but restrict their sideways movement with

cushions or bolsters.</p>

<p>Provide a broad wrap-around light: this was taken with a big

window on the viewer's left, and my wife with a bedsheet on the

right. Simplify the background by covering all the props with a

low-texture cloth or blanket. I had help from the low DOF of 6x6

too.</p>

<p>Finally, take lots of frames and be prepared to pounce if a

cute expression or interaction turns up - cuteness is worth

almost any amount of camera shake or poor light. Also, if this is

a non-commercial favour edit ruthlessly before showing them to

the mother - otherwise she'll want 10x8s of every single

shot.</p>

<p><a

href="http://www.sljus.lu.se/People/Struan/pics/tenmistakes.jpg"

>Here's</a> how <i>not</i> to do it :-)</p>

Bill, to get the 'same' images on film you need the same

magnification, which means you need the same focal length, i.e.

80 mm.

If the spacing of the mirrors is roughly the same as the spacing

of the dual lenses the images should be very similar. The

biggest difference is that with the splitter in front of a lens you are

not necessarily using the whole aperture to make the image, so

exposure may be less than the calculated aperture and bokeh

will be a bit odd at wide apertures. For small stops it won't be

such a big deal.

The other difference is that the splitter doesn't use the lens' optic

axis, where the image quality is best, so your two images may

have different asymmetric blurring from aberrations which in bad

cases might spoil the stereo effect (although my experience with

cheap binocular microscopes says the brain is good at

compensating).

I would expect all these differences to show up much more

prominantly with closeups and macros than with infinity

landscapes.