4x5 point and shoot with 38mm lens, Crazy?

I'm considering building a handheld 4x5 camera with a 38mm or 35mm lens, either the Super Angulon XL or the Grandagon. Camera would be a simple wooden box with a fixed lens. I'd like some guess focusing adjustment. The film holder would be a grafmatic 6-shooter. I realize these lenses don't cover completely, but that is okay. I will either live with this or crop.

Questions are:

Does anybody know of significant differences in using these lenses or why one is better than the other for this application? I understand the Grandagon has some focus shift? Is there a more budget minded lens available.

Is there an easy way to home fabricate, or maybe a machinist, a focusing mechanism? I realize that focusing mounts are available, but they are beyond my budget.

Does anyone have experience shooting lenses this wide? I use a 72mm on a 5x7, but 38mm on 4x5 is wider yet.

Anybody tried the Fotoman PS45 or equivalent? How is it?

Thanks for your comments.

Given the depth of field from a 38mm lens, I would build it focused at about 10 feet, which will give you everything from about 5 feet to infinity at operating apertures. I based this on f/Calc, available at http://www.tangentsoft.net/fcalc/
, mentioned in several other threads.

Bear in mind that with a lens that wide, it's very difficult to get out of your own way, particularly with low-angle sunlight out of doors. I just sold a Gran View handholdable 4x5" camera, it had nose cones and focusing mounts for 90 and 65 mm lenses, I found I used only the 90, with the 65 I kept including my own shadow in the picture.

The easiest focusing mount to make that I know of would be two boxes one sliding inside the other - have a look at some old Daguerrotype cameras!

Regards,

David

Seeing the lenses don't cover, it seems nugatory to ask if anyone has shot with lenses this wide on 4x5. Film flatness (depth of focus) may be an issue, too, as depth of focus is tiny with these ultrawides. Finally, viewfinding is going to be pretty approximate so you'll need a margin of safety at the edge of your compositions.

Then again, I've used 47mm on 4x5, but found very little use for it; likewise 110mm on 8x10. I have both 47 SA XL and 35 Apo-Grandagon, and the Apo-Grandagon is bloody wide on 6x9cm. The most fun was probably the 35mm Russian fish-eye, mounted on a shutter, with the lens shade lugs sawn off. This gives about a 3-3/4 inch fish-eye circle on 4x5...

Cheers,

R.

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There are some fairly inexpensive Chinese focusing helicals on eBay. They usually are attached to Linhof lensboads, but you can order them separately, I believe (try searching for "linhof, helical"). Initial reports on the LF forum are that they are not as smooth as Fotoman helicals.

You could just make a sliding box focus arrangement, maybe using a bolt for fine control.

I made a wooden mount to use my 8x10" Gowland PocketView on a pistol grip like a Sinar Handy with a 120mm lens, and gave it two focusing positions--8 feet and infinity--which seems to be enough. I haven't used it much, though.