The Sinar is X is a high end studio monorail camera. It is very similar to the Sinar P2 however the Sinar can only be used for 4x5 and smaller formats (including digital) while the P2 can be adopted to 5x7 and 8x10 as well. It is a very well thought-out and amazing piece of precision camera engineering. The self locking gear driven are movements are control via knobs on the right. Like the P2 the system, it is built around asymmetrical tilts that allow for special "two point" focusing.
Two point metering on the P2 (and Sinar X)
The camera can be used with numerous accessories or other parts of the modular Sinar system. Such accessory include, bellows mask, compendium bellows, behind the lens aperture system, reflex viewer, a number of baserail and rail clamp upgrades. As part of the modular Sinar system, you can add additional standards and bellows for longer focal options, or exchange the bellows with bag bellows for wide angle options. The behind the lens shutter allows one to save big money on fantastic Sinar branded Rodenstock lenses or it can be used for other "barrel" lenses including classic portrait or soft focus optics. The optional metering back allows for precision spot metering right on the focal plane; when used with the Sinar booster #1 (with Minolta meters) or the Broncolor FCM(2) meter and probe. The FCM2 and booster probe #1 are more sensitive then the Broncolor FCM1 and work better under most situations.
There is a slot on the side of the back that allows for the precision metering probe to be inserted right where the film goes. You can see the probe on the ground glass and there is a box that shows the point that will be metered. After selecting the point that you want the meter you can lock the probe in place using a lever on the metering back. Then you can make your exposure of flash readings. This allows for very accurate readings and forgo the need to calculate your bellows factor, filtering level, ect. You can measure at 18% grey using a card or average the light and dark readings... Measuring the light and dark areas allow you to know the contrast of the image and helps with visualization. (there are ~4 stops for chrome, ~7 for color neg, ~10 for black and white). Spot metering works very well with the "zone system".
Links (manuals and other resources):
There is the
Sinar Catalog (hosted on ken lees site)
The sinar
instruction manual Instructions for Sinar/ Copal auto aperture shutter
This
URL=http://www.galerie-photo.com/manuels/sinar-shutter-system.pdf page includes a great introduction to spot exposure metering and also includes information on using the auto aperture as well as exposure metering
This
has some information on focal plane meters (including ones that can be used with the sinar metering back.
This [URL=http://www.johndesq.com/pinhole/manual/sinarbooster.pdf]page has information on using a Sinar booster probe with Minolta light meters III, IV, and V
Data sheet for
Broncolor FCM2
