Front for Shanel mounted lens boards on FKD 13x18

[landstrykere]

I bought two Shanel-5 on Yahoo Japan, and needed a front to accommodate them on my FKD 13x18.

I like to tinker with what is found around and simple tools. No power tools used here excepted a small drill. Materials: 2mm MDF plate, some passe-partout cardboard, 1mm aluminium sheet, small wood screws, bolts, washers, wood glue, some cyanoacrylate glue (with a bit of graphite reinforcement), a bit of butyl, a bit of PU fabric, black spray, some floor varnish, matte chalkboard paint.
Tools:. utility knife, hacksaw blade, metal file, snip cutter, screwdriver, ruler, gluing pliers, couple drills, cutting mat.

basically finished, and also I made couple lens boards 12x12cm:



finished and on the FKD with a Shanel shutter:



in original condition with the 60's shutter (1s to 1/30s) and the plate holder and back:





with the newly made front, holding a board with a LOMO RF-4 on a Shanel-5, and with my custom "tyre" back for regular film holders:

[neutron450]

Nice work. Glad to see folks breathing new life into old gear.
Do you have a gallery posted anywhere?

[landstrykere]

Nice work. Glad to see folks breathing new life into old gear.
Do you have a gallery posted anywhere?

thank you! these FKD are easy to modernize. They were manufactured until end of USSR, many still floating around, so despite very old design, are not really old but from the 80's (this one 1981).
The nice thing with large format contrary to small and medium is that the cameras themselves are very dumb. One must pay attention to dimensions, alignment and light proofing but no small precision mechanics involved. Very simple materials and little tooling needed.

First time I buy Shanel shutters. I used to shoot 8x10 and then 13x18 with lens caps "shutters" and variable ND filters. The Shanel is very nice and in fact it's puzzling they were apparently not sold in Europe. They aren't even mentioned in most documentations about LF shutters.

no gallery by now. I had sometime at usual places (flickr, etc) but decided better have own server under a domain name. Still, have to take the time to put it together.

[neutron450]

I've never encountered Shanel shutters. This is the first time I've heard of them. Looking forward to seeing what you shoot with it when the camera is complete

I recently bought a Fairchild aerial camera shutter from Goodwill and am contemplating how I can adapt it to some large barrel lenses I have.

[cp_photo]

I found that in order to use the B "bulb" mode the Shanel 5A seems to require a cable release with a long throw. Have you encountered this and what type of cale release do you use?

[landstrykere]

I found that in order to use the B "bulb" mode the Shanel 5A seems to require a cable release with a long throw. Have you encountered this and what type of cable release do you use?

both, the 5A and 5B. I have many old and new, very short to very long cables. All kind of throws.
Here a new chinese one and some older german one, huge difference:



the shorter one is too short to fully open the blades:



the long one::



but then not much more throw is needed, like 2 to 3 mm I guess, see here with a Shanel-5B (Fujinar 250 mounted), the shorter throw cable, and how long I need to push with my finger the lever to full aperture:






The longer throw cable is one of these chinese made:

[cp_photo]

Thanks for those pictures and observations. I need to shop around for a longer throw cable release.

As for the Shanel 5A shutter I am using mine with the APO-Nikkor 480mm and an adapter by Uchinomi Camera (aka the seller Kumar who is on this site). It works great but I realized the need for a different (longer throw) cable release when I wanted to do B mode longer exposures. The Shanel 5A shutter has an impressive heft to it and is seemingly very well made.

[landstrykere]

As for the Shanel 5A shutter I am using mine with the APO-Nikkor 480mm and an adapter by Uchinomi Camera (aka the seller Kumar who is on this site). ...The Shanel 5A shutter has an impressive heft to it and is seemingly very well made.

indeed they feel very sturdy and fool-proof. I bought another 5A through Tenso Japan yesterday. Just in case.

yes, the Uchinomi adapters commissioned by the very helpful B.S. Kumar, this post https://www.largeformatphotography.i...nel-5A-Shutter .

I have mostly soviet and german repro lenses and couple brass ones of no famous make/model, so I don't think there's enough demand for ordering adapters. This last couple weeks I saw on Yahoo Japan a Shanel-5A mounted with a Dagor f6.8 18cm, and a 5B with a Xenar f4.5 300mm, the one for which Kumar commissioned first adapters.

often I tinker own adapters. This week-end I decided to do something for the Industar-11 450mm, f9, a LOMO repro lense I use a lot on 8x10. It is 70mm rear ⌀:


the Shanel-5A is 62mm ⌀ thread for mounting lens. I found in a box a 62mm-62mm coupling ring (male-male) and a 60-72 step up. So i decided to use epoxy. This is tricky because contact surfaces are thin, but gaps 60-62 and the respective internal position of the inner circle when rings are stacked make possible to fill and coat over with epoxy mass. Critical in order to ensure it will hold.
A simple tinkering but tedious: sand and clean areas, position carefully to get the two rings centered (in 1st step), mask with tape, apply epoxy inside one of the gap, remove tape here mask there, push epoxy carefully inside gaps the other side, and again, etc. It was a four steps hack:



so I get a ring with a 62 male thread and a 72 female one. The rear of the lens is 70mm. In such cases I use fabric electric tape, no plastic one, and apply whole turns (to keep a circle) in order to increase diameter, until i fits tight inside the adapter.
The original mounting thread of the lens I do circle with rubber tape, to avoid glue sticking strong over time in the threads. Then attach and secure the lens to the adapter with rubber tape too.






result:.




I just have to screw the lens on the Shanel. Done:




Most of the time there's always a way....