An experiment

David Nebenzahl wrote:
Cheesehead spake thus:

David Nebenzahl wrote:

Cheesehead spake thus:

Here's the thought.
For my 8x10, to use a variety of good barrel lenses,
I'd like to take an old Baby Speed Graphic, remove the front and back,
add mounting and a front lens board, and thus have a focal plane
shutter on the fron to fthe 8x10.
Has anyone done this?
(Anyone got a Speed FS for parts?)

Interesting idea. So how "thin" can you get the Baby Graphic? That would
seem to be the limiting factor, since (I assume) you're going to put
this in front of the 8x10's lensboard.

I saw an old commercial unit of this type sell recently on eBay.
IIRC, it went for about $160. So yesterday I asked Jim @ Midwest
about them. He'd seen them in the past. So I started thinking about
what might be involved in adding one to my current camera. The front
standard is certainly solid enough and, if constructed correctly, there
shouldn't be any more stress from it than from any heavy lens.

Good, but you didn't answer my question: how thin can you get the parts
you extract from the Baby Speed? By this I mean how thick will the whole
gizmo (front standard + shutter) be? Will that leave enough room for
8x10 bellows, etc?


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I'm not yet certain about the thickness.
The shutter might need to be mounted in a different frame.
Recessing the lens board into the Speed's body/box would also help
compensate.

"Cheesehead" wrote in message
oups.com...
Here's the thought.
For my 8x10, to use a variety of good barrel lenses,
I'd like to take an old Baby Speed Graphic, remove the front and back,
add mounting and a front lens board, and thus have a focal plane
shutter on the fron to fthe 8x10.
Has anyone done this?

Not done it, but I've also thought about it. Looking at the other replies,
I'm not sure I agree with all the sentiments expressed:

First, whether there's room to maintain infinity focus. I honestly don't
see this as a very big problem, unless your camera is very 'incompressible'
or you use some pretty wide lenses. My 10x8" 'compresses' (with standard
bellows, I don't have bag bellows for it) to about 11cm. The shutter
assembly on my Baby Speed Graphic is about 30mm deep across the shutter, but
45mm at the side where the controls are; if mounted on the front of a
lensboard it could be recessed at least 5mm and still leave all the shutter
controls easily accessible. _However_, a lens mounted to it needn't have
its rear element level with the 'front' of the shutter but can have it set
'inside' the shutter so it's only just in front of the curtains - in fact it
is probably best to do it like that anyway, and that puts the rear element
of the lens only a little way in front of the position of the lensboard.

All that says I, with my bellows and without mounting the shutter itself in
a recessed lens board, cannot use a 120mm, and probably not a 165mm, but a
180mm, say, is probably not a problem. That's still pretty wide on 10x8".
That's all taking the 'worse case' - ie., mounting the shutter on the front
of the lens board in order to have access to the controls at all times.

Second, access to controls. As indicated above, you could front mount the
shutter on a lensboard, so there is no problem. Mounting it on the back
would give use with wider lenses, but doesn't seem essential with most of
the lenses I would use on 10x8". But, if you do do it that way, you can set
the speed and wind the shutter before you insert the film holder- which is
probably what you do with an ordinary shutter anyway, I know I do - and then
put the lens board back on before you put in the film holder and pull the
slide. Arranging for the shutter release to screw into the front of the
board isn't that big a challenge.

(If I was rear mounting the shutter like that, I would put it on the back of
an adapter board: I use almost solely the smaller Arca 110mm lens boards to
save size and weight, and for my 4x5, 5x7 and 10x8 Arcas, which all take the
141mm boards, have a couple of adapters. Putting the shutter on the back of
one of these adapter boards would let it fit easily to the camera, and leave
a ready attachment on the front for the lens.)

For me the biggest problem is the fact that the lenses will always be
mounted with their optical centres a long way in front of the lines about
which the front standard pivots, making front tilts and swings more awkward
to use: a nuisance rather than an insurmountable problem.

I hope you go ahead with trying the experiment - because I'd love to hear
how you get on before I try it myself!

Cheers,



Peter