In keeping with the nature of a $5 USD camera restoration ($18 USD with inflation) here is the list of minimal expenses for the restoration of the camera:
Cost of camera (2007 dollars): $18
Lens: $125
Lens Board: $1.15
Bellows: $4.00
Ground Glass: $30 with shipping
Lacquer: $5.00
Brass: $2.00
Cherry Wood strips: $2.50
Case: $14.00
TOTAL: $201.65
Did the felt fit into a dado or was it glued on top of the wood and does this affect the t-depth? What is the t-depth of the ground glass holder? Did you measure it?
Good question.Originally Posted by Turner Reich
Actually these are velvet strips, which are different than the felt material used behind the lens board. The velvet is thinner and less compressible than the felt.
The velvet is glued right on top of the wood. Both the ground glass frame and the film holder would ride on top of the velvet without wood-to-wood or wood-to-plastic contact. Presuming both press down the same amount on the velvet, the t-depth should be the same when switching between the two. The only catcher here is that with the film holder in place there is slightly more spring tension pressing on the velvet. In real life I suspect the velvet compresses very little in either case.
So this is a little different than my Horseman 4x5 in which case the film holder and the ground glass frame have a metal-to-metal or plastic-to-metal contact, and are not directly supported by the light proofing material.
I just won some modern plastic film holders on e-bay but they are not here yet to measure. Now that my ground glass is mounted I get a t-depth right at 6.6mm which I believe is the right number to match contemporary film holders.
To test my cameras I have done a 'real life' test by shooting a landscape at infinity wide open and do a series of images varying the focusing slightly. Then I examine the negatives with a magnifier to find the best image and if it is not the frame that was supposed to match what the ground glass shows, I consider adjusting the ground glass location.
With the price of 8x10 film etc, I may just go wtih what the calipers say on this one.
I know, FALSE ECONOMY; saving a few sheets of film so I can waste a whole box on out of focus images.....
The flat black portions of the inside of the camera were re-painted. The 'flattest' black I have is Testors model enamel, and this is what I used.
This picture shows the ground glass back in place. All I need to do now is put the finish coats of lacquer on the focusing rails and I am done.
I should be getting 5 holders from various e-bay auctions. We'll see how good or bad they are.
I ordered 25 sheets of Ilford 8x10 film and the plans for processing the film would be to do it in trays.
Since I don't have an 8x10 enlarger, I will contact print. The plans are to do panoramas with 2 negatives side-by-side on a 16x20 sheet of paper. Kind of a 'poor-man's' 8x20 camera. With the 210 lens I hope the results will be dramatic.
That really looks good.
The Testors flat black is a very good choice, one that I use on my equipment. The camera looks very nice indeed.
Excellent courage, IC. Nice work and a fascinating write-up.
As you may have suspected, I am not going to go and get new film holders for this project. I got some from e-bay for about $25 a piece. Here is what I got:
3 reasonable good holders but with 2 marginal darkslides. 2 poor quality holders with 2 poor darkslides.
I took all the holders and darkslides and separated them. Then I cleaned the dirt off of them and arranged them from best to worst. The best holder got the best darkslides, and so on. That left me with 3 great complete holders, and 2 repair projects. The last holder is missing theh locking tabs, and I will just call that one 'junk' and put the worst darkslides with it.
So what do we have to repair? One holder has a crack right near the "Fidelity Elite" name. The other problem is a darkslide that is coming apart at the top (the black and white pieces are separating at the top). There is also a 2 cm crack in the darkslide. One holder is missing a white marking tab.
To repair the crack in the film holder I wanted to use a 'melting' type of glue. Model glue would probably work, but the Kodak flim cement is more liquid and brushes on, and will work its way into the crack. This worked great.
Next was the broken darkslide. The black and white pieces were 'welded' back together, again using the Kodak film cement. Again this worked great.
I don't have a good fix for a cracked darkslide. I think a bad crack is a terminal condition, but I am always trying stuff. This crack was already light-tight, and probably didn't need a repair anyway, but I wanted to try something. I used some cyanoacrylate glue and it seemed to work.
I wound up using the worst holder as a donor for a white marking strip. These strips clean up super white with some lacquer thinner. Be carefull getting the thinner on the black plastic becuse it melts the black plastic (though this effect can be usefull, see below)
The new white piece was held in place with industrial contact cement (rubber cement).
So, overall this gave me one more nice holder and one junk holder. So that puts us at about $31 a piece for the 4 good ones.
The light traps on all 5 were fine, so nothing to do there.
There is a trick with the lacquer thinner in that it can be wiped on beat-up areas of the fllm holder to re-juvinate them. This, of course can mess up a good holder, so I do this only on the worst ones. When this is done right it leaves the plactic with a nice luster, almost like new by melting the plastic a little. It can also smoothe out rough edges so the holder slides in and out better. I also wiped the area of the repair to smooth this out.
Afterwards all the holders were vacuumed with a brush attachment on the vaccum. I even used pipe cleaner to get that dirt that collects way down on the inner edges of the darkslide slot on top.
Well, these holders are now probably cleaner than they ever will be again
Processed the first negatives last night and sure enough there is a light leak in the camera.
My mistake was to use a WEAK flashlight to check for leaks. I used a smaller "Mini-Maglight" and did not find any leaks where the bellows contacts the camera frame. I should have been suspect of these findings.
I re-checked witih a the big 4-cell Maglight and, shure enough, there were multiple leaks at the front and back, where the bellows attaches. The bellows itself was fine and the ground-glass back was also fine.
I filled the gaps with this black silicone.
To process the film I just used some trays. The tip of those hemostats grabs the rebate and is very strong. Nearly as strong as a pin going through the film. I tried just leaving the hemostat attached for the whole process (including drying) and it worked fine. I didn't have to get my hands in the chemicals, or put on gloves.
I used Delta 100 in T-max (non-RS) developer. The package says 8 minutes. I ran a piece of film under the Wejex sensitometer and got a Gamma of 0.99! at 8 minutes at 'room temp' which was about 22 degrees. Looks like I will be doing around 6 minutes, but may need to run a few more test strips. I'll be contact printing with a VC head light source, so the development time does not have to be 100% perfect to match #2 paper.
Contact printing is turning out to be somewhat of a pain. I probably need a good printing frame with clean glass, but I am suspect of my ability to keep the dust out.
Here are some comparisons of 3 methods of printing (scratched, dirty glass used to emphasize effects)
1) Enlarger at top of column, stopped down, NO glass over negative/paper sandwich
2) Same but with GLASS pressing on negative/paper sandwich
3) Same but with DUFFUSER plastic and then GLASS pressing on negative/paper sandwich.
The pictures show the results, but since resolution is lost in the scans, here is the summary:
SHARPNESS: 2>3>1
DUST & SCRATCH SUPPRESSION: 1>3>>>2
The first composite picture is an impressive example of how big scraches in the glass and shadows from dust DISAPPEAR when a plastic diffusor screen is placed over the glass/negative/paper sandwich.
The second composite shows the same magical dissappearance of a smudge on the glass.
The third shows that even though tight negative/paper contact is needed, in the presence of collimated light you can still get a sharp image by just the weight of the glass alone. Or conversely, when using diffuse light, the weight of a piece of glass is not enough to get good contact.
I need to think about these results to decide where to go next.
Last edited by ic-racer; 22-Oct-2007 at 23:26.
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