Portraits in 4x5 with 240mm Barrel lens, tips or suggestions...

Hello Team,

Recently acquired Old Schneider 240;Symmar f 5.6 barrel lens without shutter have a few questions....

A) at 240mm and 6’ from subject for portraits what is the approx bellows draw required on monorail?

B) thinking of using slower film as I mostly will be doing several second exposure (1001, 1002 and so on))
I am thinking of asa 100 film for detail, what say you....I will be using Lens cap as my shutter

If I use a flash vivitar 285 I would just darken room then focus, set aperture then manually fire the flash......? Will this work?

Any filter suggestions with fp4 or EDU 100 from freestyle for portraits of this type,,

Appreciate your feedback!!!

Stay Safe!

Harlequin

Is there a sweet spot like f16 or beyond? I want adequate facial detail

harlequin said:

A) at 240mm and 6’ from subject for portraits what is the approx bellows draw required on monorail?

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Between 12 and 15 inches as a rough estimation. 240mm=9.44 inches for infinity, 10 feet 10 to 10.5 inches, closer depends on the lens and can increase significantly for each inch of closer focus.
I'm not sure you will get pleasing facial shots that close.

harlequin said:

B) thinking of using slower film as I mostly will be doing several second exposure (1001, 1002 and so on))
I am thinking of asa 100 film for detail, what say you....I will be using Lens cap as my shutter

Click to expand...

Keeping a person perfectly still that long can be a challenge. 1/2 to 1/4 second is a more reasonable exposure time but may be difficult with a lens cap.

harlequin said:

If I use a flash vivitar 285 I would just darken room then focus, set aperture then manually fire the flash......? Will this work?

Click to expand...

You can base exposure on the flash then use ambient as the fill light. Meter a gray card in the room light and adjust for your desired exposure time then set flash for the desired f stop. (general rule of thumb starting point)

EDU is Fomapan rebadged. I use it for testing cameras but use T Max, Tri X, Delta, and will consider Neopan for important stuff.

My calculator agrees with Charles.

OP, y'r procedure is somewhat cumbersome. Look into hanging the lens in front of, say, a Polaroid MP-4 shutter. This is a Copal #1 Press shutter with not diaphragm. Pretty useless, so inexpensive. skgrimes can make an adapter whose front will screw into the lens' rear filter thread and whose rear will screw into the front of a #1. A two-piece cup-shaped adapter is a more expensive alternative. A ring that screws on to the barrel's mounting threads, a cup that the ring screws into whose rear screws into the shutter. This is the same concept as the Horseman 150-300 teleconverter.

harlequin said:

Recently acquired Old Schneider 240;Symmar f 5.6 barrel lens without shutter have a few questions....

Click to expand...

This is a convertible lens, (the Symmar S is not) if you unscreew/remove the front cell then you have a 420mm f/12. Use it with a compendium shade if you have flare.

This would be aprox equivalent to a 135mm prime for 35mm cameras, which would be ideal for head and shoulders shots !!!!

Instead 6' I'd try to shot from around 10', subject will have more its own space and the "nose job" effect will be over.

harlequin said:

A) at 240mm and 6’ from subject for portraits what is the approx bellows draw required on monorail?

Click to expand...

http://kennethleegallery.com/html/tech/bellows.php

harlequin said:

B) thinking of using slower film as I mostly will be doing several second exposure (1001, 1002 and so on))
I am thinking of asa 100 film for detail, what say you....I will be using Lens cap as my shutter

Click to expand...

For 4x5" protraiture you have tons of detail, even you have too much, so use the film you like... "sharpness" will be more related to your technique, what is critical is illumination and focus.

harlequin said:

If I use a flash vivitar 285 I would just darken room then focus, set aperture then manually fire the flash......? Will this work?

Click to expand...

First focus then darken the room, with the room darkened you won't see in the GG to focus.

Get a shutter when you can... it will fire the flashes for you, some old shutter may require cleaning the contacts or placing a interfacing circuit at higher voltage.

With the flash you may use a DSLR to preview the effect, then I'd overexpose some one stop over what the DSLR needs

Consider using continuous illumination, you avoid the modelling light mess and you see the fill-key balance in the particular face, strobes are also effective but some subjects get scared after first test lightnings, and this may be seen in the expression.

Yousuf Harsh was using mostly continuous illumination at around 1/10s

harlequin said:

Any filter suggestions with fp4 or EDU 100 from freestyle for portraits of this type,,

Click to expand...

Experiment with filtration with 35mm film, women/men may take advantage from some different filtration, it also depends on the skin tone and on what you want.

Both are excellent.

Some portraiture gurus shot HP5+ or TXP failry overexposed at EI 80, then developing a shorter time in HC-110, this is to bend the curve a bit in S.

If you want to use flash, then get some kind of shutter. You could front-mount a Packard shutter with flash sync. Be aware that you'll have to use fairly small apertures even with a Vivitar 283 and 100 speed film. That may not be a problem if you're looking to have everything tack-sharp, but if you're looking for some kind of soft-focus or even just shallow depth of field, you're not going to get it with most flash units. The other challenge will be doing large format portraits with a flash that does not have a modeling light - you'll be guessing at what your light will look like from both the points of intensity and direction. Until you have some more experience with it, it might be better to get some continuous lights (LEDs or halogen/tungsten lights) that will accept light modifiers. Then you can see exactly what you're going to get, and the quantity of light will be sufficient that you can manually operate the lens cap fast enough even with a large aperture.