I don't recall the detailed history, but Frank Marshman bought up the inventory of Ilex parts to continue service for his customers.
I've not talked to him in a few years, so I don't know if he's still doing repairs. He was a forum member here and may still be today.
Frank Marshman is the go-to guy for Ilex shutters - he bought out the entire parts supply when Ilex shut down. Last I spoke with him, maybe 6 months ago, he was still accepting repair work although he'd closed his store-front. He does limit what he works on nowadays, but has always been happy to do shutter work for me.Originally Posted by sperdynamite
I bet SK Grimes can repair them as well.
It can be a drag if they need parts but they are reparable. There were a lot of Ektars in #5s made so you could find another one with a good shutter and have your repair person use it for parts or just screw in the cells. Since the Ektars had pretty soft coatings, 50+ years on, lots of them have have cleaning marks that look like they were made with farm plows and go pretty cheap. Or have yours CLAed by someone who doesn't automatically say "unrepairable". Flutot's has a good reputation: http://www.flutotscamerarepair.com/Services.htm
Last time I had my Ilex #5 CLAed, I had it done through Ed Olson in Seattle but, for those of you who remember Ed, he had his 'sources' and would not say who they were. I always suspected that they were winos living in dark garrets whose lives were a total mess but they were great on repairing stuff and only Ed knew where they were. I miss Ed.
Round shutters pertain to the shape of out-of-focus highlights (versus hexagons or whatever). But smoothness of transition is also related to lens design. Many
modern lenses render an annoying double-lined effect with background detail blur. This has nothing to do with color fringing or apochromaticity. In fact, some of the best lenses in this respect aren't particularly pleasing per bokeh. Among my own 14" or 360mm category of lenses, which does include some of the cream of the crop, including the 360A Fuji and 14"Kern Dagor, and 360/9 Apo Nikkor, I don't like the out-of-focus rendering of any of em. Luckily I had horse-traded something long ago for an old-school multi-bladed, single-coated 360 process tessar buried somewhere. I dug it out and made a filter adapter and lensboard. Plenty sharp, big image circle, very well color corrected, and ohhhh, so lovely bokeh. Just no shutter yet, so I have to use it with slower speed films and the old lens-cap method of exposure. It's not a realistic substitute for any of those other lenses, but just the right thing for a particular look on 8x10.
The congo tessar I have has very nice bokeh, esp. wide open. (240mm f/6.3).
All the Commercial Ektars in the pile to be used are in barrel along with Dagors, Artars, Heliar, Xenar and .... all are in vintage round iris aperture barrels used with a Sinar shutter. Even the Portrait Ektar and 12" f4.5 Ektar in Kodak Ilex# 5 shutters have been mounted on their lens boards in a way that allows them to be used with a Sinar shutter.
It was some decades ago when I simply gave up on Ilex shutters for being shutter speed off, not reliable enough, and all those problems common to Ilex shutters. Yet, nothing can convince me to give up those Commercial Ektars and the rest. The image results are worth this struggle and change over to a single Sinar shutter.
The cost of loosing a single sheet of film made any shutter issues completely intolerable. Consider the amount of irreplaceable time and resources lost due to shutter problems and how that lost image can be replicated..
Bernice
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