Gowlandflex, Mother Of All TLRs

[feppe]

After more than a year of searching, I finally found a good Gowlandflex for a good price on eBay! Unfortunately the lenses were misaligned, but CLA took care of that. Now it's in perfect working condition with good glass.

It's a beautiful, large and heavy Large Format 4x5" (!) TLR made by the late Peter Gowland. He made them in 5x7", and even 8x10"! The camera became an obsession for me after I learned he did much of his glamour work with the Gowlandflex he designed and built by himself. My camera has a 180mm Schneider-Kreuznach Symmar-S f/5.6 taking lens in a Copal #1 shutter, and a Xenar viewing lens.

I've had a Mamiya C220 TLR for years, but Gowlandflex is a different beast altogether, not only because of size and film. It has an ingenious auto-parallax correction mechanism, a second ground glass on the back, and the viewing lens on mine has aperture blades for DOF preview.

Here pictures of Mother Of All TLRs (aka MOAT).

1st picture shows it with Olympus E-PL1, Canon 550D and MOAT's little brother Mamiya C220 to give an idea of the size
2nd picture shows the camera with the viewing hood attached
3rd is with bellows partly extended, showing the auto-parallax correction mechanism
4th is without the viewing hood, exposing the ground glass. As it's a sheet film camera, there's a second ground glass in the back

Next up I'm going to do some test shots and figure out how not to mess up my exposures as LF is new to me..

[Dick Roadnight]

After more than a year of searching, I finally found a good Gowlandflex for a good price on eBay!

Can you get a motor-drive/aerial roll film adapter for it?

Two of my lenses (600 & 900mm) were normally used with motor-drive/aerial roll film adapters, in a aerial reconnaissance Spitfires.

[feppe]

Can you get a motor-drive/aerial roll film adapter for it?

Two of my lenses (600 & 900mm) were normally used with motor-drive/aerial roll film adapters, in a aerial reconnaissance Spitfires.

Since it's you asking, I presume you're serious According to his website he designed several cameras which were used for aerial recon, perhaps more which he couldn't disclose. No idea if he ever made something like that out of his TLRs - I certainly wouldn't have a use for it

[Dick Roadnight]

Since it's you asking, I presume you're serious According to his website he designed several cameras which were used for aerial recon, perhaps more which he couldn't disclose. No idea if he ever made something like that out of his TLRs - I certainly wouldn't have a use for it

One of the main advantages of the TLR over conventional sheet film cameras is speed, so a motor-drive option would have been logical... especially if he used the technology in other cameras!

I think "they" can disclose anything after 50 years, and you can buy 2nd world war aerial recon. cameras (I think I saw one on eBay).

¿Has anyone got a 6 inch shutter? - yes, this is a serious question!

[narikin]

I was at a photo fair in the UK late 1980's, where I saw some very modern aerial RAF cameras with Twin Zeiss Biogon 38mm's on them- the latest T* versions etc.
All very cheap - something like $300 per paired camera.

I didn't buy one then -idiot- but got the dealers #, and contacted them some months later to ask about buying one, only to be told the RAF had come and bought them all as Gulf War I War had started and they needed their equipment back!

[feppe]

Here first ok test shot.

Old Town (aka Red Light District), Amsterdam. Gowlandflex 4x5 with Symmar-S 180mm, Fuji Velvia RVP50, scanned at 6400 dpi with Epson V700.

Using sunny 16 I got f11 @ 1/30, and this is a bracket half a stop over. I think I'll have to rate Velvia 50 slightly slower, as the mid and low brackets were too dark and there was plenty of headroom in the highlights when I scanned.

I was surprised by the shallow DOF - I knew it was shallower moving to LF, but still. According to Cambridge in Colour's DOF calculator I should have gone all the way to f/32 to get the church steeple sharp!

Got also burned by the framing; I found a reason for the guides on the ground glass