Fixing Light Leaks - Large Format Bellows Repair
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- Опубліковано 5 лип 2024
- In this video I walk through how to check large format camera bellows for pinhole leaks and what materials to use in repairing them.
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Nice, liquid electric tape was my first thought but I decided to look to youtube to see what everyone else was trying, happy to see this confirmation.
I have a solution that may interest you, I dedicate myself to restoring cameras in Cuba which puts me in a very limited situation with resources and I discovered that a spectacular material is a black membrane that I extract from the paper of some medium format negatives, some marks They are a paper with an additional black layer that can be carefully peeled off, it is incredibly thin, totally lightproof and extremely flexible. The first accordion I repaired from a very deteriorated 1930 Zeiss Ikon was done 7 years ago and it is still perfect. I use a glue that shoemakers use, diluted a little in gasoline
Very interesting! Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll have to explore that next time I have a repair to do. Never thought of shoe glue, sounds like a great idea
Great video Chris. Super nice that you show the testing of the various methods. And thanks for the shout out! Returning the favor, I've now linked this video in the show notes of my bellows repair video, added this video to the end screen on mine so it'll link back and also put one of those pop up cards in the middle of my video, linking back here. So let's get some synergy going because people need to see this video.
Thanks Scott, that really helps me out and although I never expected that I definitely appreciate it!
@@ChrisDarnell You're most welcome. I'm already planning to link to your channel in the video covering the day we met in Zion, but since you released this one, it was the perfect opportunity to do another one first.
I fixed a Agfa Isolette bellows with black electrical tape too. but thanks testing it out
cool, I have a million holes in my old Eastman View No.2 8x10, I have 22 peaks and every peak on all 4 sides have leaks. I hope this works. Film ain't cheap.
Yikes, sorry to hear that! Quite a few people have been suggesting FlexSeal as another option, I haven’t tried it myself yet but in case one of these don’t work that might be another option. Much luck!
The liquid electrical "tape" would've been my recommendation from the get-go, but nice to see that it actually works _that_ good! (I did just use it, without doing proper testing; I tried some other repair stuff more similar to this Silicon RTV before, and wasn't satisfied.)
Marshall here. Flex Seal? That’s the first thing that came to mind. I use it for and it seems to work. Anyway, thanks fir the video.
Ha! I've never played with that stuff but I have to imagine it would work pretty well. Thanks for the tip!
On my bellows, I use a mix of flat black acrylic paint, water, and white glue in a 3:1:1 ratio. Applied from inside, works a treat.
I wonder if you needed to put together a field repair kit how it would work if you used 70% alcohol instead of the water and only mixed everything as needed in the field?
@@AtlantaTerry the alcohol would definitely accelerate the curing time. I don't know how it may affect the durability of the finish or if it might negatively affect the adhesion, definitely worth experimenting. The water is only there to thin it down to more easily get into the fibers and pinholes. It would still function without it.
I had the Toyo 45g from new. I used it for about 30 years for professional studio work. When the bellows started to leak light I used a thin black gaffer tape type material which I applied to all 4 corners. It worked a treat, and kept me in business. It’s a great camera.
30 years is a long time! The camera is built like a tank so I can totally see how it could stay in service that long. I think that's what I appreciate about the system; it's a mature technology that's meant to endure. Pretty refreshing coming from the digital world where a new camera comes out every few months.
good video thanks
If you ever need to replace the bellows on your Toyo camera, eBay has some for sale. The only problem they can go from cheap to somewhat expensive. I though your solutions to the light leaks were real good options. I was thinking about the last video and your explanation about why you got into film. I think that because people now are rediscovering film without having schools or experienced mentors to teach them it makes it difficult to fully imagine the potential of film and to understand what it takes to get great images. For example if you wanted to shoot like Ansel Adams you would need to understand pre-visualization, learn how to work the zone system, Understand light, learn how to become a very good printer, have a knowledge of your subject, just to name a few of the steps you needed to learn. Ansel traveled to the many places he photographed and observed the light and how it hit the subject (landscape) at a certain time of day. When Adams took the famous picture of Moonrise Over Hernandez in New Mexico he understood the precise time the moon would be at the right position that he wanted in the photograph. its like a sports photographer knowing a sport so well that he can photograph the moment the ball gets into the hands of the receiver as he is jumping in mid air to catch the ball. What is important in photography is that you have to have a philosophy of how you shoot. Ansel Adams was also a musician and he connected the notes of a song, the beauty of music to his photographs. What digital photography had done is make it simple to take a bad photograph and make it into a decent one by making the manipulation of the image so easy. Photoshop now takes blemishes out almost automatically, you can change the backgrounds, lighting, clothing, the place where the photo was taken and make it a totally different photograph. In photography there has always been manipulation of a photo, but it was dodging, burning-in, addition of props, using artificial lights but nothing compared to the digital process with the computer and software. One last thing if you are working with black and white film, color film, or digital, each is a medium on its own and has to be worked differently. Black and white is based on light sensitive silver particles and has to be worked to optimize the gray scale. Color film which is also based on silver has color dyes, digital is pixels and ink which has a different look and feel than the silver based image. Your digital black and White image at this moment cannot produce a zone system quality black and white print. As you said it digital is close to color film, but it is different too look at because prints are printed with inks and it looses that feeling a silver based print has. If your interested there are books on eBay and Amazon on using a View camera which explain things like bellows extension factor.
Chris, thank you for the test of those 3 black fillers. I was always told that black liquid electrical tape was the way to go and now I know for sure.
I'm going to make up a small repair kit in case my bellows is damaged while I'm on a trip. I think I will recycle one of my tiny tough plastic vials that my glucose test strips come in. Since it is fairly air-tight, a small bit of the liquid tape should last a while. Since I always have a small kit of Q-tips with me to clean lenses and filters, I can use one of those sticks as an applicator.
Terry Thomas...
the photographer
Atlanta, Georgia USA
Thanks Terry, I think a field repair kit sounds like a great idea! Particularly with the backpacking kit I'm putting together; being several miles into the mountains and developing a pinhole would be terrible!
For temporary field repairs to your bellows you may want to consider using gaffers tape. It's made for film and photography and is similar to duct tape but more easily and cleanly removed.
It can also be used to temporarily repair many other items like clothing, shoes, tripods, cameras, packs, bags, etc. Very useful.
Great info -- thanks! Exactly what I needed. :)
Thanks for watching!
Very helpful stuff. Just what I needed to fix my folder. Excellent choice in background music too!
Thanks for watching and I'm glad to help!
Hey thanks for this I'm trying to get an old autographic brownie up and running and it has so many pin holes, I got gasket rubber and applied that all over, didn't work now it's taking me forever to get it off as it isn't light tight at all, (my fault I did this ages before I watched this) now I'm ether going to get flex seal or liquid electrical tape
I've heard a lot about flex seal since posting this video, I had never ran across it before but quite a few people seem to have really good results with it; it would be interesting to see another shootout between the liquid electrical tape and flex seal.. perhaps a future video!
Thanks so much for testing I was on the fence about what to use. I also thought the Permatex would be best but now see the liquid electrical tape is the way to go. Going to repair some old Kodak 3A cameras bellows.
Thanks so much for watching! As a side note a few have noticed it needs a day or two to fully set and I would avoid folding up the bellows while it's still tacky. Best of luck!
Just curious if you did any deep cleaning and lubricating when you got your camera. I just got a 45CX in really good shape but it has a lot of dried grease and sticky oil on it. In the Toyo manuals I can find they just say to wipe it down with a cloth is all you need to do basically so I don't know if these cameras should have any oil or grease on them at all. Seems like a small amount will help in certain areas though.
Interesting.. I can't say I had anything like that experience when my camera arrived; it was pretty clean. I imagine the adjustments that have gearing on them could benefit from some light grease but I'd hesitate to apply any unless there's an issue that calls for it; perhaps if it had sticking gears or binding. All the adjustments on my particular Toyo are smooth so I haven't done anything to it.
I do have an old Canon AE1 35mm body that suffered from the dreaded "mirror squeak" issue and found that a few drops of machine oil really cleared that issue up, however I can tell you that over the course of a couple months those drops of oil migrated their way to EVERYWHERE inside the camera so I'd keep that in mind and be careful!
@@ChrisDarnell after closer inspection it looks like the worst of it is on the fine focus gearing and it honestly looks and smells like cosmoline. It could just be a very heavy wax based grease but it's gone very sticky. I think I'm going to clean it off and lube that area with a light application of heavy silicone lube made for plastic/metal contact.
Just wanted to drop a reply here for future readers. Whatever you do, DO NOT remove the sticky grease from the Toyo focusing racks. That grease is a special damping grease that gives the focusing knobs a smooth feel and allows fine control without jumping movements. You may also find this stuff applied as a very thin coating on your front and rear standards to make the movements smooth. If you do find you must clean it off you can replace it with a grease from Nye called Nyogel 767A. I'm speaking from experience, any normal grease just won't work.
That’s really good to know, thanks for sharing!
There are many light leaks that can happen, especially on view cameras that are old or hand made and wood
The hardest to fix is when the film holder no longer sits right against the camera back and there are lights around the edge of the film holders . You will get a lot of dog and sometimes black or dark negatives for all the light bleeding in.
New bellows won’t fix that
Thanks Nicholas for the heads up. Fortunately none of my cameras appear to have much wear in this regard just yet, but I'll keep an eye out for that
@@ChrisDarnell I have an 8x10 from almost 100 years ago and it light leaks into the back from the holder slot. Only remedy is to keep the dark cloth over the camera when pulling the slide, exposing, and putting the slide back . A lot of old camer users have to do this.
8x10 ain’t cheap! 😂
Thinking of trying this with my Kodak 3C. This camera isn't so precious, but would be a project to try to shoot some film with it. 120 isn't large format, really, but whatever. We'll see.
120 is still plenty big! Best of luck Cathryn, I hope you get it working!
Might cut the "liquid tape" 1:1 with MEK mix very well and apply in a few thin coats on both sides. Its hard to tell anything is on the surface at all.
Thanks for the tip!
FlexSeal
Hadn’t heard of flexseal until after this video was posted but it’s come up several times since then. I’ll definitely have to check it out!
Curious how this solution is holding up - just saw some light leaks in my camera - probably using your solution.
Hi Michael, so I eventually ended up buying a new synthetic bellows for the Toyo in this video, but the original with the liquid electrical tape patches is still hanging around as a spare. The one thing I noticed is that if you have to do a larger repair the electrical tape can kind of stick to the folds in the bellows when it's compressed, particularly if the patch is on a flat seam that contacts another surface when compressed down. I ended up scoring the outside of the patch lightly with a scotch brite pad to get more of a matte surface and that seemed to help. Patches on the corners didn't seem to be a problem as much. Hope that helps!
Pliobond is the supposed option for bellows yet you have found another.
Never heard of that one, thanks for the tip!