Do Intrepid lens boards fit Chamonix cameras?

I'm thinking of treating myself to a Chamonix 45F-2. Most of my lenses are on proper Linhof/technica lens boards and I can use them across my Wista 45D and my Intrepid 4x5 and my Intrepid 8x10 (with the Sinar -> Linhof adapter plate). I'm pretty certain they will work on a Chamonix.

I have a longer lens (300mm Geronar) that is on an Intrepid lens board. i.e. same size as Linhof but flat aluminium without the bottom corners cut off. This won't fit my Wista but that is not an issue because the bellows aren't long enough to make use of it. The 45F-2 bellows would be long enough to make good use of it. (I have a couple of other lenses on these boards too).

Looking at the picture, it looks like Chamonix boards are similar to Intrepid except with a good inner ring.

Does anyone have experience of this? Is it worth me migrating my Intrepid mounted lenses across to "real" Linhof ones. I don't think I can stretch to the Chamonix carbon fibre ones - though that would be nice.

Yes.

The Chamonix can use the boards with or without the cut corners.

Email Chamonix. They're very helpful with questions about using non-Chamonix products with their cameras.

RogerHyam said:

I have a longer lens (300mm Geronar) that is on an Intrepid lens board. i.e. same size as Linhof but flat aluminium without the bottom corners cut off. This won't fit my Wista but that is not an issue because the bellows aren't long enough to make use of it. The 45F-2 bellows would be long enough to make good use of it. (I have a couple of other lenses on these boards too).

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The Wista 45D has a bellows extension of around 300mm, enough to allow the Geronar to focus at infinity. A simple top-hat board will permit closer focusing. If you want to use even longer lenses, Wista makes long bellows and rails like this:

Kumar

B.S.Kumar said:

The Wista 45D has a bellows extension of around 300mm, enough to allow the Geronar to focus at infinity. A simple top-hat board will permit closer focusing. If you want to use even longer lenses, Wista makes long bellows and rails like this:

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Kumar

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Wow - I've never seen that extension before! It would be heavy though - not really a field camera.

I have thought of the top hat as an option. Reasonably it only gives about 50mm of extension which would focus down to about 2 to 2.5m with the belows all the way out which is getting useful but is "inelegant" - tilting is no longer close to the lens axis etc.

I love my 45D as a workhorse and will hold onto it. It is indestructible and I can keep a standard lens on when I fold it. The downsides are it weighs twice as much other options so carrying any distance is hard and I miss not having front fall. To eliminate the sky in landscape shots I find myself on a slope looking down. With a baseboard camera you can theoretically tilt the bed forward and then tilt the standards back to bring them vertical but I have got myself into a fangle several times doing this. My Intrepid works well and is light but I have to treat it with kid gloves as it is quite flimsy - the opposite of the Wista. So it isn't just bellows length I'm after. If it was I'd probably go for a top hat on the Wista and be done with it.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

Most people are not aware that the correct lens board for the Wista has a centered hole and use the standard Linhof spec board, which is offset downwards by about 7 or 8mm. Wista themselves supply this offset board as standard. I was made aware of this a couple of years ago via a discussion on LFPF and confirmed it with Wista.

If you find that you use front fall very often, I can get you custom drilled lens boards with the hole offset according to your specifications.

Kumar