Whole Plate Madness (with Technika Board Adapter)

My whole plate outfit is rounding into shape. Thanks to Jim Galli, I not only have a nice camera (Improved Seneca), but also a couple of film holders. (By the way, Jim happened to be coming into town, so he delivered the holders in person. It was great to meet Jim, talk photography, and play with his 8x10 2D and an old brass barrel lens. Viewing a scene through one of those lenses when wide open is something that you should experience if you have not yet had the pleasure!) The Seneca has a nice new bellows from Western Bellows, and I just finished building an adapter to allow me to use my lenses on Technika-type boards on the Seneca.

I thought that some of you might be interested in the adapter board, so here are a couple of photos. The Seneca board is small for adapting to Technika-type boards, so the approach might be useful to those of you in a similar situation.

The adapter is made of aircraft plywood and a bit of 3/4" square pine. I made a board for the Seneca out of two pieces of 1/8" plywood. (The board has a light trap that is a bit narrower than the outside of the board.) I drilled a big hole in the board with a hole saw. To this, I glued 4 pieces of the 3/4" square pine (cut on a mitre saw), leaving enough room for the top and the bottom of the Seneca-sized board to mate with the camera.

I built an adapter board using a piece of 1/4" plywood, a 2" brass mending plate, two brass machine screws, a nylon screen clip (for holding window screens in place), some felt, and a couple of brass wood screws. The mending plate needed an extra hole in the middle, which was made using a drill press. The big hole was made with a 4-1/4" hole saw. I used a file to bevel the edge of the hole to enable the Technika style board to fit. Once the hole was large enough for the lensboard to fit, I located the mending plate and screwed it into place. Next, I marked the location for the two machine screws, which hold the bottom of the board in place, and drilled two slightly smaller holes in the board. The Machine screws then screwed in to those holes quite easily. The next step was to place the nylon screen clip in place and screw it in with a brass wood screw, leaving it loose enough to rotate into position to hold the board in place. Next, I used a tiny brass wood screw as the locater pin that fits into the notch at the bottom of the Technika style board. It was a bit big for some of my boards, but not for others. I just filed the shaft of the screw near the head, and now it fits all my boards. Then I glued the adapter board to the box made from the 3/4" wood pieces.

The adapter is flat black on the back of the Seneca-sized board and inside the adapter. It is semi-gloss black on the outside. I bit of light leaked in between the Technika boards and the adapter boards, so I glued some black felt around the inside edge of the hole in the adapter board. That did the trick. The whole thing is now light tight. (I think if I had a router, I could have made a cut precisely the right size to fit the back of my boards, perhaps avoiding the need for the felt.)

Except for the felt and the model airplane plywood, all of the items are available at Lowes.

Next step: To take some photos, and also to build an extension board so that I can use my 450mm Fujinon C with the Seneca.

looks great, dave!

It sure does look great!

Boy, I see a slippery slope ahead with rehabbing these old wooden field cameras... :shakesheadmiserably: ;)