A friend of mine is a master machinist & still does much of his hobby work at home with a machine that he has to set up, not a CNC machine with computers. He built me an adapter board for Technika to be used on a Deardorff. 19 separate setups to make the board. It takes time & effort to do it so it will work properly.
I have been a machinist for 27 years. I work at a Universty for the last 5 years. I could find the scrap aluminum to make mine with, but it is cheaper for me to buy a $30 board from Badger than it is to make it myself on my own time. However.......... if some one was to have sizes or samples of a bunch of boards and make them 100 at a time and stock them it would be worth the time and money.
Regards,
Dan
I've been satisfied with www.bromwellmarketing.com. Both for their standard, in stock converter boards, like Sinar-to-Technika, and a custom board, Wehman-to-Technika.
You're right, they are expensive. So are some lensboards. Years ago, I standardized on my own lensboard. It is the same dimensions as the Linhof (3 3/4 x 3 7/8"), except mine is just a rectangle without the fancy bevels, notches, etc. Just a flat metal lensboard. I had a stack of these made by a machinest. Cost me about $40 for a dozen of them. Then I have adaptered these to a Toko wood field camera (it fits directly on this as it was meant to take the Linhof style), a Canham (I built an insert that just squeaked in and wasn't as complicated as Canham's), a 57 Deardorff (again, another insert that I had machined for $40) and a Kodak Master (I made an adapter out of wood that was very easy to make that goes between the 6x6 and the roughly 4x4). These are not fancy adapters, there are not expensive to make, and most importantly to me since I like wide angle lenses, they don't add to the minimum focus distance.
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Ben,
Make on yourself. It is easy enough. You have to sacrifice a lens board for each camera you want to adapt. Some people will just drill the large diameter hole in that board to accomodate the Linhof boards. I wanted the lens to be in the same plane with the adapter as without on my Sinar (don't know if this would really affect the assymetric movements or not). I cut a rectangular hole in the Sinar board to clear the Linhof board. Then I mounted a backing plate made from aluminum with the large diameter round hole to accomodate the Linhof boards. The toughest part was coming up with a secure and easy to use clasp to hold the board in place. After a few evenings work with the files, Dremell tool, drills and taps I started to rethink the $200. What I've got works fine. If you wanted me to make one I'd be hard pressed to do it for less than $200.
You saw Bromwell mentioned above and they have several flavors. Also check Midwest and KEH who usually have them used for 75 -125.
Yes a nice one is expensive but worth it. I made one out of a single block of maple with a tablesaw, a drill, a jewler's saw, coping saw and one sharp chisel. It is ugly, it took hours, but it works perfectly and cost me nearly nothing. How broke are you and how much time do you have?
Cheers,
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