Old Rochester plate cameras and B&L Shutter

I have a Bausch & Lomb Unicum shutter and would welcome advice on how to
set, cock and release it properly.
I have not received it yet, but it is having a retaining ring made & a
Graphic lens panel drilled to suit.
This shutter was used on several American cameras.
My example houses a Beck Biplanat 150mm f5.8 Rapid Rectilinear.

"Neil Purling" wrote in message
. uk...
I have a Bausch & Lomb Unicum shutter and would welcome
advice on how to set, cock and release it properly.
I have not received it yet, but it is having a retaining
ring made & a Graphic lens panel drilled to suit.
This shutter was used on several American cameras.
My example houses a Beck Biplanat 150mm f5.8 Rapid
Rectilinear.
I can't find anything on the Unicum in my material but
there are pictures of it on the web. It appears to be
similar to the B&L Automatic, a self-setting shutter with
two shtter blades and air brake regulator. There is a second
air cylinder for use with an air release bulb. If I am right
the shutter should operate when the lever is pushed. Unless
someone else knows for certain that this is a shutter
requiring separate cocking (should have a separate cocking
lever) and it doesn't operate from the tripping lever its
likely something in it is jammed. It may need only a
cleaning. Many of these old shutters have blades made of
Ebonite, a type of hard rubber. Sometimes the blades warp
with age or from exposure to heat. The warping can jam the
shutter. I don't know of any fix for warped blades though
they may respond to being clamped flat for a very long
period of time. I keep thinking I've seen the Unicum
described in some book I have so I will keep looking.


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Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA




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Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

I do not have the shutter in my hands. I sent it to S.K. Grimes for
assesment and to get a aluminium Pacemaker Graphic lens panel drilled to
suit. One doesn't expect great accuracy, and one usually uses the very
slowest speeds anyway.

Neil Purling wrote:
I have attached the image of the Unicum shutter I own and one cut from a
Bausch & Lomb trade advertisment C1898.

It's bad karma to post binaries to non-binary groups.

"Neil Purling" wrote in message
...
I have attached the image of the Unicum shutter I own and
one cut from a Bausch & Lomb trade advertisment C1898. No
operating details given.
On the dial of my shutter it looks like there is a tab as
index for the speed. However there's something at
approximately 11 o clock in the advert pic & on my
shutter. I don't know what it's function is.

The shutter/lens is at SK Grimes for assesment and it
needs a retaining ring before it can be mounted to a
Pacemaker Graflex lens panel.
Has anyone got any idea of what sort of plate a 6" Rapid
Rectilinear would cover at infinity from experience?
Large format lenses seem to give of their best at around
f16-22. I am not sure sure about this lens.

The little lever at the top _may_ be for cocking. Its in
a different position in the two pictures. Too bad you don't
have the shutter to look at. I couldn't find any more in any
literature I have or on the internet. From the outside the
shutter looks very similar to the B&L Automatic, a very
common shutter which was also made for Eastman Kodak and
sold by them under several names. However, this is not the
same shutter.


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Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA





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Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

By posting the pictures at least people might recognise the shutter as one
they have used. I had never heard of any Bausch & Lomb shutters before,
never mind how to use them. If B&L supplied shutters and lenses to a camera
maker then perhaps the name Unicum might have been replaced by the camera
brand name.
As I am h ving the shutter examined and attended to I didn't want to harm it
by incorrect operation.

"Neil Purling" wrote in message
...
By posting the pictures at least people might recognise
the shutter as one they have used. I had never heard of
any Bausch & Lomb shutters before, never mind how to use
them. If B&L supplied shutters and lenses to a camera
maker then perhaps the name Unicum might have been
replaced by the camera brand name.
As I am h ving the shutter examined and attended to I
didn't want to harm it by incorrect operation.
The photo was helpful but its considered bad practice to
post binaries in non-binary news groups. They can be posted
on a web site and a refering URL included in the message.
Bausch & Lomb built millions of shutters. They had the
rights from Fredrick Deckel to build Compound and Compur
shutters in the U.S., they also built many shutters of their
own designs. For several decades B&L built the shutters and
lenses for many Kodak cameras, these number probably in the
tens of millions. B&L also had a contract with Zeiss to
build Zeiss design lenses in the U.S. When all German
patents were seized by the U.S. Government on our entry to
WW-1 B&L continued to build both shutters and lenses based
on German designs. This continued after the war, with B&L
using the original Deckel and Zeiss names (Compur, Tessar,
etc.) but without reference to the original makers.
The shutters and lenses are not identical to the German
versions. The shutters vary in detail and parts are not
interchangible between German and B&L made ones. B&L also
modified the design of the Tessar over the time they were in
production. Both shutters and lenses are quite respectible
but the German shutters are more rugged than the B&L
versions.
At some point Kodak began making many of its own lenses
but continued to use B&L shutters well into the 1930's.


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Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA




--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

The lens in this shutter is a No3 Biplanat by R& J Beck of 6" focus and f5.8
aperture.
I was told that this lens might not be a rapid rectilinear type as expected.
If it is a R.R. it is rather fast.

On Jan 4, 2:32 pm, "Neil Purling" wrote:
I have a Bausch & Lomb Unicum shutter and would welcome advice on how to
set, cock and release it properly.
I have not received it yet, but it is having a retaining ring made & a
Graphic lens panel drilled to suit.
This shutter was used on several American cameras.
My example houses a Beck Biplanat 150mm f5.8 Rapid Rectilinear.

I have a Unicum shutter and B&L lens on a 4x5 Pony Premo camera that I
got about 35 years ago. I did my first large format photography with
that camera. The shutter still works, so these things are made to
last.

On top of the lens is a round dial with the shutter speeds, as well as
B and T. There is a round bead at the top of the speed dial. This
serves 2 purposes. The speed dial can be rotated (mine is stiff and a
little hard to rotate, but not that bad). The shutter speed at the
round pointer bead is the speed selected. Once the speed is set you
rotate the speed dial and the indicator bead to the right. This cocks
the shutter by setting the two spring pistons on the sides. The
shutter can then be fired by the trip lever.

I have another Unicum shutter that has only one spring piston on (I
believe) the left side. This shutter also still works.

I've found these Unicum shutters to be accurate enough for most
purposes. I took a lot of 4x5 pictures when I was in grad school with
this camera. At the time I think I was using Kodak Tri-X film
developed in Microdol-X. In later years I switched to HC110. I had the
cheapest light meter I could get. The Pony Premo camera was lighter in
weight that the Super Graphic I got about ten years later, and took
just about as good pictures as the Graphex Optar lens on the graflex.