I'm building a small quarter-plate camera to do wetplate collodion and thought it might be nice to incorporate a Packard Shutter within the camera body to help regulate the long exposures. I wanted to keep the camera as small as possible (given my limited woodworking skills) and have it take Deardorff 4.5" radius-cornered boards so the lenses would interchange easily with my DD 4x5 Special. I also recently acquired a small iris mount for barrel lenses that fits on the DD board and wanted to include that option as well.
Well, I figured out I could save a bit of space by drilling through the Packard so that the air fitting comes through both the shutter and the lensboard just outside of the space occupied by the iris. I'm happy to report that it works. It allows one to maximize the size of a Packard Shutter within the camera.
There is actually quite a bit of room to allow drilling through the shutter. If you look at the rear of the assembly with the piston oriented to the right and the "Instantaneous" pin at the upper right, then the upper left corner is pretty much available for drilling. The shutter leaves do not travel beyond the screw which holds the shutter face and back together. It's easy to take the back cover of these things off and see exactly how much room there is available for this modification.
There was not enough room to use the standard pin assembly due to the extent of the iris mount so I've also used a bent paper clip to act as the "Instantaneous" pin. The length of the paper clip has been adjusted so that it seats in a hole in the lensboard for instantaneous operation and swings out of the way and rests on the iris mounting screw ledge to allow time exposures.
See the attached pic...
Joe
Well, I figured out I could save a bit of space by drilling through the Packard so that the air fitting comes through both the shutter and the lensboard just outside of the space occupied by the iris. I'm happy to report that it works. It allows one to maximize the size of a Packard Shutter within the camera.
There is actually quite a bit of room to allow drilling through the shutter. If you look at the rear of the assembly with the piston oriented to the right and the "Instantaneous" pin at the upper right, then the upper left corner is pretty much available for drilling. The shutter leaves do not travel beyond the screw which holds the shutter face and back together. It's easy to take the back cover of these things off and see exactly how much room there is available for this modification.
There was not enough room to use the standard pin assembly due to the extent of the iris mount so I've also used a bent paper clip to act as the "Instantaneous" pin. The length of the paper clip has been adjusted so that it seats in a hole in the lensboard for instantaneous operation and swings out of the way and rests on the iris mounting screw ledge to allow time exposures.
See the attached pic...
Joe