4X5 Whad-IZ-it? Your head scratcher for the day...

[jimgalli]

Whad-IZ-it? Fits in a 4X5 film holder place and has a hole 1 3/4" for a barrel lens. But why?

 

[AgX]

Maybe to adapt a much smaller camera-body as back to a LF view-camera.

But then, what is that knurled screw knob for? And what happened to that rod? And how is it fixed?

 

[BobD]

Explain the pin, please. Why is it visible in some photos but not others? Is it connected to the knob?

 

[jimgalli]

The knob tightens the brass rod against whatever is in the hole. It only moves about 1/8 inch or less.

 

[otto.f]

To put an enlarger lens in and slide it in the enlarger

 

[AgX]

What enlarger has a sliding lens stage? Moreover Jim explained that the thing replicates an international film holder at one side.

 

[AgX]

Maybe to adapt a much smaller camera-body as back to a LF view-camera.

What would not work as then there still would be the groundglass in the way...

 

[AgX]

Maybe to optically adjust front and rear standard to each other.

 

[Don_ih]

It looks like it's supposed to turn a large format camera into a macro bellows (or just use a large format lens at normal focal length). You'd need an additional tube that was the proper mount for the slr on one end and retained by this thing via a flange and the set screw at the other. You'd need to remove the ground glass. Of course, it's probably for something else. I have seen a similar thing rigged up before, though.

 

[Ian Grant]

As it sits under the sprung focus screen holder, it seems to maybe have parts missing from the centre. It's for measuring something, the fact they were applying for a Patent means something, but there's no indication what is missing.

Ian

 

[Don_ih]

Don and Ian, this was my idea. But see my remark on the groundscreen. I do not know of an international back where one can take off the screen and the spring mechanism holding the film holder still being usable. The groundscreen is integrated into such spring mechanism.

You can remove the glass without breaking it. If your plan is to only use the camera with an slr, you wouldn't care about keeping the glass in. And, at the same time, this becomes a universal-type insert for such an application. If I was forced to make an adapter that would work with any brand of slr and any brand of 4x5, this is how I would make it. You make different tubes for different slr lens mounts and supply them individually.

It's really just a guess. But I can't see anything else it could be.

 

[AgX]

What would not work as then there still would be the groundglass in the way...

Well,I got a spring back where the screen is rather easily to be taken off. In such cases it should work.

 

[AgX]

Mounting a camera body by adapter with an retaining ring could cause a problem at pulling out the 4x5 plate. Such adapter likely would have to be taken off before. A screwd-in adapter would work well. For unknown reasons here an arresting bolt is used. This is not convincing concerning a sturdy connection, but seemingly it worked.

 

[Don_ih]

Mounting a camera body by adapter with an retaining ring could cause a problem at pulling out the 4x5 plate. Such adapter likely would have to be taken off before. A screwd-in adapter would work well. For unknown reasons here an arresting bolt is used. This is not convincing concerning a sturdy connection, but seemingly it worked.

You use a flange at the end of the adapter tube with a groove into which that retaining screw can be tightened, so the camera can be rotated any amount. The tube does not have to be long, so it wouldn't weigh the adapter plate back very much. The normal pressure of a spring back should hold it well enough - especially a light slr like an Olympus OM1 or Pentax ME.

 

[Bill Burk]

It’s an improved Galli Shutter! Goes on front of lens, screws down to hold in place. You hold two dark slides up to it. Since the surface is flat and smooth you can align the dark slides more reliably and can get up to 1/1000 second.

 

[Ian Grant]

My gut feeling is it's what's left of a very early focal plane light meter. Looking at the aluminium casting, it's possibly pre-WWII and probably using the extinction meter principle.

Ian

 

[Don_ih]

You don't think it looks like this thing?

A back adapter for Canon eos to 4x5

 

[Ian Grant]

No, those were only introduced when DSLRs improved. Jim's device gas to sit under the focus frame to be held in place, Graflok backs were a late post WWII introduction.

Ian

 

[Don_ih]

sit under the focus frame to be held in place

And it would work equally well if the ground glass was removed.

It's possible it held a meter.

 

[Ian Grant]

Removing the GG screen in the field from it's frame isn't on, way to impractical and older screens were often 1.2 to 1.5mm thick glass and quite fragile. An extinction meter would use the GG screen, being out of ficus slightly could be a benefit. It's likely this product was not successful.

Ian

 

[Don_ih]

Removing the GG screen in the field from it's frame isn't on, way to impractical and older screens were often 1.2 to 1.5mm thick glass and quite fragile. An extinction meter would use the GG screen, being out of ficus slightly could be a benefit. It's likely this product was not successful.

Ian

I doubt practicality mattered. If this was made for mounting an slr to use the camera to take advantage of its movements (the only reason to do it), no one would care about the ground glass. By the time slrs light enough to mount to the back of the camera came around, lots of view cameras would've already been considered albatrosses.

It seems a bit clunky for having a meter and offers no access to the meter from outside the camera. The meter would need to be less than 1cm thick, mounted in that circle, only viewable through ground glass. Is that practical?

 

[Ian Grant]

I have a meter less than a centimetre thick, and also 1.75 inch in diameter made from 1902 until the late 1930's, a Watkins Bee, Ica then Zeiss Ikon made meters of similar size. My guess is the meter was adjusted by the thumb wheel, then the plate taken out and an indicated figure taken and used with a set of tables. There would only need to be one moving part as it used the focus screen,

What it isn't is a plate to mount an SLR, I make and fit a lot of GG focus screens, there's no way anyone would make or sell a plate to slip under the focus screen holder for that purpose. You wouldn't mount an SLR on a LF camera to take advantage of movements, you'd use a roll film back. But with a DSLR people stitch multiple images together with plates like the one you posted.

You need to remember that in the 5 years before WWII films and plates were improving dramatically in speed and fine grain, Ilford Fine grain Pan * Hypersensitive Pan films were released in 1934/5, and way ahead of Kodaks films at the time, FP2 and HP2 were released in 1937, Kodak's modern equivalents Plus-X, Super-X and Tri-X (sheet film only) were released in 1939 However FP3 and HP3 were then released in 1941. Agfa had just as good films as Ilford.

My point here is these modern films needed far better exposure control to get the best from them. LP Clerc in Photography -Theory & Practice 2nd Ed 1937 mentions the first cine cameras with auto exposure, aperture control, were introduced in 1935, In "Die Neu Foto Schule" 1938 Hans Windisch is extolling the use of light meters, the book has adverts for various Gossen models. Also published in English as The New Photo School it's an early handbook of our modern approach. The 1956 English edition was expanded and became "The Manual of Modern Photography - The Technique".

So logically people were also looking at the more unique exposure issues with LF cameras where bellows extension plays a far more critical part in exposure compensation. Having used extinction meters, they can be surprisingly accurate.

Ian.

 

[AgX]

What it isn't is a plate to mount an SLR, I make and fit a lot of GG focus screens, there's no way anyone would make or sell a plate to slip under the focus screen holder for that purpose.
You wouldn't mount an SLR on a LF camera to take advantage of movements, you'd use a roll film back.

Well, Sinar took a different view in the old days. They offered 2 solutions to change a smaller-format SLR body into a view camera:

1) a plate with a body adapter (Hasselblad, Nikon) that mounts into the rear P-standard substituting the whole international back

2) a camera plate to mount on the P-series rear-standard carrier.
How then to couple the bellows light tight to the camera body was left to ones own tinkering.

 

[Don_ih]

What it isn't is a plate to mount an SLR, I make and fit a lot of GG focus screens, there's no way anyone would make or sell a plate to slip under the focus screen holder for that purpose. You wouldn't mount an SLR on a LF camera to take advantage of movements, you'd use a roll film back. But with a DSLR people stitch multiple images together with plates like the one you posted.

A 35mm slr used 35mm film. There's no roll-film back for that. Also, you don't need ground glass when you can compose through the slr viewfinder. There are obvious and definite advantages to using an slr hopped onto the back of a view camera - superior to using a roll-film back.

This was probably not a very successful product, whatever it was. The reason to use something that took the place of a film holder is as I stated earlier: it would work with every view camera, since it didn't depend on how the back is attached. I can't swap the backs on my Graphic View and Cambo cameras, but I can put the same film holder in either.

It most likely is something no one has yet mentioned.

 

[jimgalli]

Maybe I'll incorporate it into the darkroom door with a doorknob coming through the hole.