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Author Topic: 4x5 for Digital  (Read 18104 times)

Anders_HK

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4x5 for Digital
« Reply #20 on: August 04, 2008, 10:03:22 am »

For focus, would helical mounts like this help accuracy, assuming enough movements maintained on camera itself due added extension to lens mounting? ... http://www.schneideroptics.com/ecommerce/C...D=1105&IID=1874
http://www.schneideroptics.com/ecommerce/C...D=1105&IID=1876

Regards
Anders
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BobDavid

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« Reply #21 on: August 04, 2008, 10:45:35 am »

Quote
For focus, would helical mounts like this help accuracy, assuming enough movements maintained on camera itself due added extension to lens mounting? ... http://www.schneideroptics.com/ecommerce/C...D=1105&IID=1874
http://www.schneideroptics.com/ecommerce/C...D=1105&IID=1876

Regards
Anders
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I use a helical mount with a Schneider 72mm Digitar on a pancake camera mounted onto a copystand. I've also used 4X5 view cameras with that particular lens. The helical mount is fantastic, it really makes focusing a lot easier and more precise.
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jaime

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« Reply #22 on: August 04, 2008, 06:20:16 pm »

Ok, we are getting fool (me too) just as we spent so much in db, we must use it for everithing, it sounds just too complicated, just go for film, sure its not what you wanted to hear, but for me it seems the Way to go.

This time just 1 cent

Jaime
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BrianWoolf

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« Reply #23 on: August 05, 2008, 08:37:39 pm »

Anders

I think you will have a lot of problems, but I wiill tell you what I know and you will have to pick out the info useful to you.
As a 4x5 still/studio guy for 30 plus years, a normal film lens was 210mm, a wide might be 135mm or 150mm and a super wide was a 90mm Super Augelon and I really don’t remember any film lens shorter than the 90mm, though there probably were a few, what would you need them for? So the lenses you are looking for are mostly early crossover digital types created for the smaller MF sensors and also for 4x5 film.

I use a 4x5 sinar p with a Leaf Valeo 17wi with ‘LiveView”on a Phase FlexAdaptor sliding back and this past week i have had to use my 90mm Fujinon SW. Well i can see everything thru the groundglass, but it’s very small. The focus is strange, i turn the focus knob on the camera a quarter turn or more and the focus seems to stay the same, then finally pops out of focus. Same problem going back, but even if i think its in focus - it might not be and i find out on the computer screen. Both the 90mm Super Angelon and the 90mm Fujinon both have a slight yellow cast on the right 20% of the image. Noticeable most on a white or pale background, not really with strong colors and i am using the centers of these lenses. My best lens is a 150mm Schneider Symmar MC lens. In general longer lenses do better as light rays strike the sensor at closer to or at 90 degrees to the sensor.

I have tried a 47mm Schneider xl (an early model and a cheap purchase). It needs a recessed lensboard, a bag bellows and pushing the front and rear standard as close together as I can. The back of the lens is about one inch away from the sensor when focusing on 5-20oz soda bottles at about 2 and a half feet. In the ground glass i can only see about the center third of my photo. In effect i see the middle 3 of 5 bottles and no way can i see bottle 1 or 5. The lens is great, no distortion and it is sharp but almost unuseable as far as looking thru the ground glass. And that is probably why all the Alpa’s, Cambo Wide DS are point and shoot with a viewfinder stuck on top. It is either prohibitably expensive or not physically possible to create a viewfinder/groundglass to see the whole image clearly at 47mm and below. Come to think of it i had a difficult time seeing into the corners of a 4x5 film camera when using the 90mm. I tried to stick the 47mm on an old square rail cambo, I have lying around. I took off the tripod block and moved it in front of the front standard and move both standards as close as I could and the lens, on a recessed lensboard, was out of focus, by a good bit. Ebony(sorry never used one) claims on their web site that the SW4x5 will focus a 47mm lens and maybe it will or maybe not. Ebony’s stitch option is the phase flexadaptor (think it weighs close to 4lbs), whose best stitch option is a 3 stitch that gives a third extra on each side, effectively doubling your image size).

 You want to stitch to most of a 4x5 groundglass, I would say that it would be extremely difficult without a geared self-locking camera, like a sinar p2. If you have to unlock and move the lens and relock the front standard, you have to move something out of alignment or focus.

It is the pratical stuff that can go really wrong.
Best advice - try it out somehow, some way- make a deal with the devil - before you spend a penny.
It could work, I would like it to work, but some one would have to show me in person, before I would believe it.

Brian
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jaime

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« Reply #24 on: August 06, 2008, 02:31:44 am »

You are right Brian, i have been shoting with a cambo legend for years, the wider lens i owned for this camera was a 90, not so dificult to focus and compse, but a dramatical diference from 135 and 210, when i needed wider lenses to shot ship interiors, i needed to buy a silvestri S4, 47XL and 58XL, interiors of the kind of luxurious ships y use to shot have a lot of dark reflective wood, so most of the time where phtographed by night, the best way i find that worked for me was to compose with optical viewfinder, focus estimated and set it with the scale in helical focus, check with pola and if al was right, shot film, i think in a sunny landscape, there is much more light, but still dificult to focus and compose, specially for db tolerances.

with the first db i owned, Sinar 23 light, on a Fuji 680, i found that the focus where very difficult, so i wanted to be sure, live view was a must, so when i began to use a 23hr (multishot) i needed to go to P3, with digital lenses, this worked fine for years.

the last to years, i have been using emotion 75, not so good to focus and specially, to tilt right at first time, now, my emotion75 is back to factory for upgrade to live view.

for the ship interiors, now i´m using a silvestri bicam with 24xl, still the same way as with 4x5, optical viewfinder, estimated focus, preview in laptop... but it will be much much better with live view.

if you are serios about this photographs, with extreme wa, a rigid camera with helical focus and sliding stich back is the way to go, if you just want to play, best dont, spend money.

good luck
Jaime
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Gary Ferguson

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« Reply #25 on: August 10, 2008, 08:19:10 am »

I used a Linhof Technika with film for 20 odd years, now I use a Linhof M679cs with a Phase One P45+ and Rodenstock Digital lenses.

There's still a lot of unresolved issues with large format digital, some have been discussed (like the need for micro-gearing and ultra rigid camera chassis), but one that hasn't received much attention is the viewfinder image.

There's a world of difference between inspecting a 4x5 image on a ground glass screen versus a 37mm x 49mm image. And IMO the equipment available today leaves a lot to be desired. You really need a loupe that's x7 or higher to achieve critical focus with digital (just think, for any given print size you'll be enlarging the image far more from the digital sensor dimensions than you would from sheet film), and today's screens don't really deliver at these high magnifications.
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