How to find the right plate holders for my Folmer Crown View camera

Hello,

I just registered with Photrio because I became the owner of a beautiful Crown View camera yesterday. It has a 4x5 back, and modern film holders fit in perfectly. However, I also want to shoot Zebra dry plates and was wondering if you know of any plate holders that fit my camera. In Europe, I can only find sheet metal holders for Zeiss or Voigtländer cameras, for example, which do not fit 4x5 camera backs.

Thank you so much!
Lena

Zebra makes new dry plate holders that would work for your camera.

I would think you could use an old film pack holder to expose glass plates. Might have to put some spacers on the top and bottom to center the plate to the aperture (not sure) and cover the tension springs with some thin cloth tape to avoid scratching the back of the plate. Like a film holder, it would have to be loaded in the dark and it has a integral dark slide like a film holder.

If it works (and I don't see why it would not), these film pack holders are plentiful and very inexpensive, as the pack film is no longer made.

I converted a film pack holder for my Graflex Reflex Model D 4x5 into a ground glass holder, but the same principal would apply to a Crown/Speed Graphic film pack holder.

There are 3d printable inserts that keeps the correct distance to the film plane to use with the Film Packs and standard backs as mentioned by Kino.
As you are located in Europe I would also like to suggest the combined Linhof film/plate holders. They are 9x12cm but usually very affordable (10 euro or so) and very nice to use as they have features such as side button to eject films/plates. The only potential negative to be aware of is that they are thicker than regular film holders. If the springs holding the ground glass are very tight you mind find that they are hard to get in place.
To be clear: this is the type I am referring to:

There are also standard film only cassettes from Linhof but they look different and lack the side latch/button thing that you can see in these pictures.

Thank you so much for your ideas and help.

A friend of mine uses Linhof film holders frequently. He told me that Zebra plates do not fit very well, because they are a bit thicker than the dry plates from previous eras. That is the main reason I was thinking about one of these older plate holders.

_T_ said:

Zebra makes new dry plate holders that would work for your camera.

Zebra 4x5 Dual Glass Dry Plate Holder V2 | Plate Photography

Zebra 4x5 Dual Dry Plate Holder V2 is a modern take on a traditional glass plate holder. It is universal and can accept glass & tin plates as well as film!

zebradryplates.com

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I have seen these holders. Do you use them?

lena_h said:

I have seen these holders. Do you use them?

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I don’t but I have heard good things.