Barrel lens photography

Darryl Roberts

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Hi,

Anyone who does or has shot with a lens in a barrel, i.e. no shutter, how do you suggest opening and closing, e.g. lens cap?

Advanced thanks to any agreeable responders.
 

jimjm

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Certainly a lens cap could be used for longer exposures. A better option would be a Packard shutter which could give you the option of bulb or instantaneous exposures (~1/25th of a sec.). These can be mounted behind the lens board, inside the camera, or even affixed to the front of the lens. Just need to ensure that the shutter opening (aperture) is large enough for the diameter of your front or rear lens element to avoid vignetting.
 

Vaughn

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I try to close down so that my exposures are at least a second. After removing the darkslide, I partially remove the lens cap and let things settle down. I then remove it slowly from the rest of the lens, hold it in front of the lens to make sure the camera has settled down -- then dip my hand down for one-ansel-adams (repeat as needed), then quickly raise the cap in front of the lens and slip it on. 8x10 and 11x14.

I have also used a hat -- taking the lenscap off with the hat also over the lens, let the camera settle down, then use the hat as the shutter, eventually replacing the lenscap while the hat is covering the lens again. At night I have just used the darkslide in front of the lens.

For much longer exposures, I do the same, but sometimes nap on the particularily long ones like this 4x10 image (I think it was 30 minutes):
 

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NedL

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Same a Vaughn, although I'll give it a try all the way down to 2/3 of a second.. loosen the lens cap, let it settle ( usually holding my hat in front of the camera ) then pull it off and start counting.

But I use paper negatives and calotypes, so it's not hard to stop down to a 1+ second exposure for paper, and calotype exposures are usually measured in minutes. I don't own a shutter for LF
 

MattKing

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With my pinhole camera and its "flap" shutter, I combine that with a black ball cap held in front of the flap and then lifted away, kept away for the time, and then put back at the end of the time.
 

NedL

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watch out though... some baseball hats have little round things on them that look almost like tiny sewn buttonholes... I guess they are air holes... they can leave little lines across your negative ( wonder how I know that ) So check your hat before you use it
 

Sirius Glass

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Use a focal plane shutter cameras ==> Speed Graphic or Graflex are examples
 
OP
OP

Darryl Roberts

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Thank you
 

Peter Schrager

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my lens has a diaphragm so I stop down; for bright days I use a .3 neutral density filter with slow film FP$ or Arista EDU 100
use the lens cap....easy!!
 

EastCityStudios

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I use a Graflex SLR with a focal plane shutter for small fast lenses (mainly a 7 inch Cooke series II aviar lens) for larger lenses (my Dallmeyer 3a portrait lens) I have built a drop shutter using a combination of elastic bands and gravity. it is a very simple construction and I can post pictures if you want though I don have only currently on the computer.
 

Pioneer

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Graflex SLR for 4x5 and a Packard shutter for the larger film.

As I remember Jim Galli also demonstrated using a handheld scissors style shutter in front of the lens. Takes a bit of practice and your shutter time may not be perfectly on the money but many black and white films are pretty forgiving of exposure errors. Obviously this works better for longer exposure times. https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...ter-for-barrel-lenses-drum-roll-please.13953/

Old timers also used a guillotine type shutter which took advantage of gravity.
 
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Nokton48

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Ian Grant

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I have quite a few barrel lenses, Rapid Rectilineras, Petzvals, EWA etc, all can be used with a shutter. I have varoius options front mounting leaf shutters Luc, AGI, Gitzo, focal pane shutters separate (fit the rear of field cameras, Packard shutters, and many Thornton Pickard roller blind shutters my preferred choice. Also I have SLRs and Speed Graphics. I've missed a few other types



Ian
 

jim10219

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BrianShaw said:
Speed graphic is how I do it.
Click to expand...
Me too. Though before I bought that, I thought about building a guillotine shutter. It's basically a shutter that uses gravity to pull the shutter for consistent timing, and you can vary the timing by adjusting the width of the slit. It's just a light tight box in the front of the lens with a groove that the shutter rides in. The shutter itself is a long board with a slit cut out in the middle. When it's all the way up, it blocks all of the light from reaching the lens. Then you drop it, the slit passes over the lens, and lets in a controlled amount of light, then the top of the board completely blocks the lens again. It's not a perfect mechanism, as it's hard to get it light tight while keeping it loose enough for gravity to pull it through. And gravity accelerates objects, which means the top will get slightly more exposure than the bottom. But it can still work pretty well, and is something simple enough that you could DIY out of wood or plastic.

In the end, the Speed Graphic made more sense to me, as it was also a lot easier to carry around than my Sinar F1. It triples as my field camera, barrel lens camera, and hand-held large format camera.

I now have a broken Compound 3 shutter that I could use for a barrel lens shutter. The mainspring is bad, so it only works in B or T mode, and it's got a pretty wide aperture (also the aperture blades have been removed). I used it to scavenge parts off of for some of my other Compound 3 shutters (I have several antique lenses). I haven't tried it yet in that capacity, as the Speed Graphic's focal plane shutter does an excellent job. But it is an option that I could consider if needed. So something like that could be a consideration, though you'd need to figure a way to mount it.
 

Cloudy

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The only times I shot without a shutter, I was testing an old 8x10 view camera in the studio, so I darkened the room and I pumped the flash to its maximum potency and all I had to do was taking off the lens cap, manually flashing and then putting back the lens cap. These were portraits and I did not have to worry about motion blur because the flash "freezed" the model and the rest of the long exposure was not registered on the paper (yep, I was also shooting on resin coated paper to make things more difficult for myself ^_^) because the ambient light was too dark
 

Vaughn

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Just for fun here is the way I did the same thing as Cloudy -- only I connected the strobes to the 8x10, opened the lens on the 4x5, and fired the strobes via the cable release to the 8x10. Polaroid Type 55 print, uncoated, exposed for the negative. A longer cable release would have been easier if I had one, but perhaps not as much fun. So while I did not use a barrel lens, I did not use a shutter...at least not the shutter on the camera with the film! The print was taped to my office door for a few years.
 

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Vaughn

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Excellent. Cloudy. Excellent way, also, to use such light-hungry material.

I trained my boys to hold poses up to 2 minutes (for 8x10 film) -- but they were back in the landscape and some movement was acceptable.
 

Cloudy

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Vaughn said:
Excellent. Cloudy. Excellent way, also, to use such light-hungry material.

I trained my boys to hold poses up to 2 minutes (for 8x10 film) -- but they were back in the landscape and some movement was acceptable.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'm glad you like it.

Wow, 2 minutes is a really long time!
 

KenS

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Darryl Roberts said:
Hi,

Anyone who does or has shot with a lens in a barrel, i.e. no shutter, how do you suggest opening and closing, e.g. lens cap?

Advanced thanks to any agreeable responders.
Click to expand...

i use an film holder plenum inside a 'fitted' envelope of black velvet (fluffy side) out and will continue to so do until I can
afford to have a 'real' shutter installed by Grimes' company.

Ken
 
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