DIY Lens Board & Giant Soft Focus Lens - Large Format Friday
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2024
- Before you get into BIG trouble with BIG lenses, check out this DIY solution for mounting a barrel lens onto a lens board. Today I'm mounting my latest old-school purchase, a Graf Variable lens onto a Sinar lens board. I'm not using custom tools, but working with materials you can find at your local hardware store! After the lens is mounted, I'm also taking it out into the field to test it out with some paper negatives and RA-4 direct positives.
"Get a Frickin' Tripod" Shirt: teespring.com/get-a-frickin-t...
SK Grimes Photographic Machinist: skgrimes.com/services/
Questions? Send me an email: largeformatquestions@gmail.com
Content by Mat Marrash: www.matmarrash.com
00:00 Intro
01:35 Mounting Options
03:59 It's DIY Time!
05:29 DIY Montage
08:25 The Graf Variable
09:18 Field Testing
11:02 First Setup
12:37 On Contrast
13:19 Second Setup
15:28 Portrait Test
17:05 RA-4 Reversal
#largeformat #filmphotography - Навчання та стиль
Here is a tip. When you remove the lens cap to make an exposure without a shutter, if you remove the lens cap in a downward direction, replace it from above. That is more like a focal plane shutter’s motion so that the film receives a more even exposure.
Will have to give that a try, thanks!
😝 few Engineering tips from an Engineer -
Don't use a tap as a centre punch if will probably snap!
A little oil on tap will help it cut cleanly,
Cone hole slightly with screw size drill with finger tips before tapping.
Otherwise 👏 good effort and LENS!
Stuart I'm sure there was plenty in the video that left you cringing and I appreciate the helpful tips! I did forget to mention the use of cutting oil on the tap and the hole saw.
That’s not a lens, it’s a glass bucket: You will perfect it with that lens. You have a lot of talent young fella: Well done 👍
Thanks Brian, it really is a bucket-o-glass. Hopefully I can do this nearly 100 year old lens some justice!
Mat Marrash you will mate and some!
“Welcome to pokin around with power tools.”
Hahaha
Fun Fact: My favorite YT channels are DIY home improvement, not photography.
I tried this once with a Toyo 4x5 years ago. I took two Copal shutters with Yashinon 80mm lenses from two junk Yashica TLR's and mounted them on a homemade plywood lens board. I was experimenting with stereo. It never worked out. My only observation was you usually use a light machine oil to lubricate the tap when cutting threads. An interesting DIY video. Thanks
Ok, Matt your hair is matching the big lenses, now back to making lense boards, which is nothing more then a square piece of wood; an easy project.
When the lens board is wood, I agree, it's not too bad. Metal can be a bit trickier, and more so with large openings from big brass lenses!
Good UA-cam day with new videos from Matt, Ben Horn and Borut Peterlin. :)
Videos like this are why I look forward to Friday mornings.
Mat, thanks for this video! I had a bought a lens (on ebay) that was mounted on an Speed Graphlic lens board for my new Intrepid 4x5 camera. No problem I thought, just move it to the Intrepid lens board. When I tried to do this the retaining ring would not budge! I froze it, I heated it, I used correct tools and a vise, I tapped it with a hammer. Did not budge! After 3 days I was afraid I was going to ruin my new lens before I even got to use it. Decided a DIY solutions was best. So I mounted a lens permanently attached to the wrong lens board to an Intrepid lens board. Can share this if anyone else who has had a similar problem.
Thanks for sharing your DIY solution Eric, glad it worked out and you were able to get it onto a lens board that worked! I'd like to see it if possible.
@@MatMarrash Thanks! Here's a couple of photos, front and back. I sandwiched quality plywood, painted black of course, between the two lens boards. share.icloud.com/photos/0EjdN2bMeWOxs66HYyVSQGsqQ
Nicely done!
No CNC needed my friend. Only a lathe, a 4 jaw independent chuck, a boring bit and a vernier of some sort. Great job BTW.
Thanks for the comment, when I was doing research for the DIY the lathe and chuck were mentioned quite a lot and it was making me lose hope. Then buried in some old forum comments I found one poster that had reported good luck with some simple materials and thought I'd give it a shot. Maybe one of these days I'll find an excuse to buy some more tools I probably won't use often. ;)
Really, really excellent video - the DIY solution was quite interesting, and the lens is fascinating! Thanks Mat!
Wow, that lens is quite a beast! Really interesting results.
Haha, you're a brave man mounting that beast :-) Great job. I do like those tree shots in the 'sharp' setting. Quite interesting bokeh.
Thanks Filbert, it's an interesting lens and I'm looking forward to trying it out a lot more here on the channel.
That soft focus is classic. I have a 100 year old Voltas triple convertible that I’m hoping will give a similar effect with the rear element.
Thank you so much for this tutorial! It helped out so much and saved me a lot of time and money. It worked like a charm!!! Super excited to try my new/very old lens out!!!
Aaron very glad to hear it helped and enjoy the newly mounted lens!
Even if your Sinar seems strong enough, I wouldn't recommend taxing either your or my Sinar to hold up that size lens. That monster lens was probably meant to be used on something like an 11x14 Deardorf studio portrait camera that looks sort like a smallish process camera. Though the lens' center of balance may be lined up with the lens board, you still might wear out the softer parts like the hard rubber/plastic parts that grip the rail or the finer focusing rack on the front standard, especially if you tilt the camera. Additionally, the rail extension itself shoulders some of the weight/stress. Might as well hang a twenty pound sand bag from the front standard while you're at it. :) Sinars are great cameras, but they're not indestructible.
Consider sometime trying a modern lens, with the front element group removed. When you haven't got a wonderful old lens like you use here, the uncorrected aberrations can give a beautiful soft glowy look.
Thanks for the tip!
I loved the soft look!
Thanks Nick!
What a lens...
Has to be one of the best LF series/ videos out there.That lens makes the photos look right out of a 50s magazine or something, Im digging the DIY type stuff like this. Also, how satisfying is it to slide in that giant 8x10 film holder?
Many thanks Nick! The Sinar gives a very satisfying "snap" once the film holder is in place, and second only to an Arca-Swiss for that smooth operation. ;)
Dang. And I thought my Jim Galli modified 12" f4.5 Wolly Velostigmat was big. That thing is a monster. Cool look to the photos, though!
Thanks Chris! It's a beast that I hope to tame and harness some of its power.
Matt, if you go to the camera eccentric web page, there is a whole 24 page booklet on the graf and how to use it. It is not as easy to focus as you might think, good luck
I would love to fit my Cooke portrait lens onto my 8x10 deardorff, however the lens board for the deardorff is a 6x6 and the barrel diameter of the lens is almost 7". Even if it was possible I think the 10lbs lens would probably tip the deardorff onto the ground :)
Teng Vang you could make a new front standard 😂
Thanks for the comment Teng, I've seen some crazy adapters out there but I'm always nervous about using them on something like a folding field camera. Even a rigid one like a Deardorff would get shaky with such an imbalanced load.
@@MatMarrash Hence my cooke lens is relegated to my old Kodak Studio camera that is very capable of that lens. However it is not very mobile at all.
Interesting video, awesome hair
An interesting one this episode, for some reason I hadn't viewed it until now. Got the same problem with a 24" lens but the diameter of the lens is bigger than the lens board so will have to rethink this one. Got myself a few bits and pieces together from parts of LF cameras and will have a go at putting some kind of Frankenstein camera together.
Thanks for the comment Jonathan! I've seen a few adapters out there for lenses larger than the board size, but not much larger or else you'll need a separate lens support. If you're using a monorail like a Sinar, another option would be to add an "intermediate" standard to act a s a lens support that could frame up a larger lens.
Just mounted a Konica Hexagon GRII 300 mm F9 on a spare Toyo45c lensboard. Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with this shutterless behemoth. It has such a large image circle since it seems to be a process camera lens, I have to figure out what the f-stop is when on a 4x5. This should be fun.
Hey Mark, you're working with a very sharp 300mm process lens there! Unless mounting the lens has cutoff some of the lens opening, it should still be an f/9 lens when focused to infinity on 4x5. Depending on how close you plan on focusing that lens, you may need a lot of bellows for a 4x5 camera (monorails should be fine).
@@MatMarrash thanks Mat
I used a similar lens on a copy camera in the cartography lab in college. Back in the dark ages when mastodons roamed the earth and the crust was still warm!
hello Mat I wonder why you do not calculate exposure correction with an extension of your bellow in this case thank you good day
Cool video Mat. The expression Monster Lens should have made it to the title to bait some newbies into LF 🙂 Looks like you might have about $100 of tools to get that board drilled and it seemed a vertical drill would have made your life easier.
Thanks Nico! Funny enough I've got a vertical drill and due to the large amount of board being cut off and lack of variable speeds, the hand drill worked fine. Plus, I wouldn't be doing any of this if I was trying to make life easier. ;)
providing you have correct lens board for your camera will any lens work?? example i know my lensboard is 4x4. im using a burke and james 4x5 camera
Maybe you could try an in camera cyanotype with this lens because it's fast it will take the whole day tho but then you will have some spooky uv images
I'll need to have my fire extinguisher at the ready for in-camera UV process!
@@MatMarrash hahahaha dont point it where the sun is going to be and it should be fine I haven't had any fire problems.
Mat, Do you have any advice on focusing soft focus portrait lenses? I have a pair of Veritos (14.5 in. & 18 in.) that drive me crazy trying to find focus. I end up stopping them down to f/11 or so to get some sharpness and then opening them back up for the shot.
Hey Joby, thanks for the question! Even on the "soft" mode, I've found the Graf to be easier to focus than something like a Verito. My best recommendation is to have something on hand with a sharp edge and a specular highlight like a metal ruler to gauge what's in "sharp" focus. That way you can rack in and out of focus to see what it looks like when wide open.
I see lenses listed in inches not mm. What are they referring too and is there a conversion table to figure out the equivalent comparison.
Hi and thanks for the comment. This is an old lens from an American manufacturer, hence the lack of metric measurement. To convert to mm, multiply the inches by 25.4.
12:55 bellows sag - how bad does it have to be for it to interfere with the image being cast by the lens? I guess you'd see it on the GG.
It's all based on the angle of view and bellows draw. Sag is intensified with longer bellows extensions, but easily corrected with a small amount of support. Droopy bellows can sometimes be hard to see on the ground glass because it's out of focus, and will appear at the bottom of the upside-down frame.
Hey. Would it be possible to mount a hasselblad lens to a view camera?
Thanks for the question! While you certainly could mount a Hasselblad lens, one reason it may not be desirable is the lens image circle. Hasselblad lenses will not cast a ride enough image circle to illuminate an entire 4x5" frame. One might be okay for something slightly larger than 6x6, but not by much.
Matt, how are you developing the paper? Developer, dilution and time? thanks.
Ilford Multigrade 1+9, 20C for minimum 60 sec., maximum 90 sec.
@@MatMarrash Thanks for sharing, much appreciated.
LFF!!!!!!
Could you use a Sinar shutter with this lens? Would it affect the effective aperture since the diameter of the shutter it is smaller?
Thanks for the comment! When I did the color RA-4 shots near the end of the video I had front-mounted the Sinar shutter since it could hold my filter pack and achieve faster shutter speeds. It modifies the wide open apertures to f/5.6 @ 16" and f/6.3 @ 18", still not too bad for portrait work!
@@MatMarrash Indeed, but it was so brief that I must have blinked when it was shown 😅
Thanks for the reply!
@@MatMarrash -- Yeah, I really dug that color photo with the two doges!
I cheat by making my own lens boards from wood, plastic and aluminum and after I cut the hole I use a zip tie to secure the lens.
I don’t think my Chamonix F1 would hold it up 🙃
Use another front standard. That's what all the holes are for ;)
I think you have to adjust your I think you have to adjust your Mississippi seconds.... really no 2 seconds just nearly 4 seconds ....seconds.... really no 2 seconds rather nearly 4 seconds .... I wondered myself how counting seconds depended on my daily form and I could no longer understand the results. So now I have a manual stopwatch.
this is amazing. I have a 914mm f8 glock and howell aero lens, which is also quite huge. I sadly cant add pictures, but my lens doesnt have any screwmounts. So a friend of my father just did a little thing for me. It is now sitting happily in my Ulf photo and video camera. If you want to see the the mount you can dot that on my instagram @schafer.leon
Thanks Leon, also fabulous color work over on your IG!
Mat Marrash Thank you alot, it is so amazing that you interact with people, i really appreciate that. I hope you as a human also get a bit time off here. Please never feel the need to answer my comments. Just be kind to yourself and keep on doing stuff you like