Yep -- I did the same thing with mine. Definitely a more convenient solution.Originally Posted by Gordon Moat
Yep -- I did the same thing with mine. Definitely a more convenient solution.
Thanks for the tip, mine does have the second threading, I'll try it!
I can't comment on the Shen Hao since I don't have one, but I'm a satisfied Berlebach tripod user, I have a 9043 model for 4 years now and I'm very happy with it, I've used it with a Gandolfi Variant Level 1 4x5", which is much more heavier than the Shen Hao, and various lenses (Nikkor 75SW, Schneider Apo Simmar 150mm and Nikkor 300M), , and the tripod with this equipment never disappointed me, it was always very stable and absorbed vibrations very well (much much better than a metal tripod)...my model is the one with the tilting column and a bubble level in it, so levelling the tripod is very easy and if you want you can use it without and head, saving weight...now sometimes I use the Berlebach with a Calumet C1 8x10" and a Sinar F2 8x10" and, while not stable as with a 4x5" configuration, it does a decent job anyway...here is my review of the 9043 model, sorry it's in italian, you can try to translate it with babel fish or something similar:
http://www.fotoavventure.it/freecont...bach/index.php
Ciao
Marco
Last edited by Marco; 13-Sep-2006 at 23:39.
I've had my HZX45II for just about three months. When I bought it, a work colleague who's an Ebony user commented on how well made it was. The widest lens that I use is a 75mm. It was originally on a recessed board. Now I have the bag bellows, I have replaced the recessed board with a flat one. The bag bellows definitely help: the movements are very stiff with the normal bellows. I do however find that sometimes the bellows material gets in the way of the front controls, making it a little tricky to apply tilt.
I also have a 150mm and 210mm lens.
I use an old Gitzo 224 tripod with a Manfrotto 029 head (I have no idea what the Bogen model number is). The combination is really sturdy although it's a bit heavy. I occasionally hanker after a Gitzo Mountaineer carbon fibre tripod, but I baulk at the thought of paying almost as much for the tripod as I did for the camera!
I don't use a reflex viewer. I have a heavy focusing cloth that I fit to the carrying handle with a large bulldog clip. I don't have any real problems viewing an upside-down image, although it does take some getting used to.
The camera has loads of movements - probably way more than you need. The majority of the time I find that just front tilt and some rise/fall is all I need. I ocassionally play with rear tilt and have used the rear shift on odd occasions.
The bellows extend to 300mm in 'normal' configuration. You can extend the bellows to 360mm using some jiggery-pokery, but I wouldn't want to use the camera in this way. It just doesn't seem rigid enough. One day, I'll get a 300mm lens, but I'm almost certain that it will be a telephoto lens rather than a long-focus design.
Overall, I'm delighted with the camera. I think it's fine as a beginner's camera and I suspect it will be fine for many years.
Sort of an older thread, but I was looking through the archive for something and rediscovered this. I've had my shenhao for a couple of months now and I also had this problem with the rear movement lock not being tight. I talked to badger and they recommended a thicker plastic washer between the locking ring and the moving parts that lock down, but sent me the wrong piece (no big deal, they've been a great dealer in all other respects). I had to makeshift a result from the hardware store that didn't carry the proper washer size, so I found two washers of different sizes that mated with each other perfectly to form a single washer with the right hole & outer dimensions, and now it tightens up beautifully; tighter in the normal configuration, but normally tight in the swing-right config that used to just flop around. I didn't want to move the lever to the other hole as Gordon suggests because this results in the lever protruding too much from the back which makes it more annoying to package away in my backpack (even in the loose, lever-to-the-left configuration). Adding the washer increases thickness just enough that it tightens up great.
Anyway, that aside, I really like the Shen Hao. This is my first large format camera, and I find that it's quite easy to perform whatever movements I want. Movements are limited with the 90mm lens / standard bellows combination, and I'm often too lazy to switch to the bag bellows, but that's my problem and not the camera's.
With the right bellows for the lens, the camera outperforms my lenses (90 f/6.8 grandagon-N and 210 f/5.6 apo-sironar N) in terms of available movements. I almost always use back movements (rise and/or shift) to fine tune my composition, and I'm very glad I didn't get something like a tachihara because of this. About the only movements I haven't been using regularly are the axis tilts (the front one is just there for extra bellows extension when you need it, and base tilts are quicker to do on the rear standard). Generally speaking my lenses run out of coverage long before the camera runs out of movement, though I've used base tilts & camera tilt to get some extra rise with my 210mm lens which has fairly good coverage.
Actually I do have one other minor gripe; the gridlines on the ground glass are not aligned properly with the edges of the film - they're slanted by about 2 degrees. I plan to fix this some day because it is a huge pain in the ass for architecture. I've been relying on the bubble level to get verticals right, but I've still had some trouble with buildings because of this. At some point I plan to get a replacement glass and make up a better grid.
I use a reflex viewer (mine is from a Cambo but it is the same but with a different base assembly - a bit of Velcro fixes that). Down side is that with my 90mm SA, even with a Fresnel, it is dark in the corners making composition borderline as you can't alter your viewing position to move the hot-spot. That problem disappears with my longer lenses (180mm & 360mm). Having said that, I still use the viewer probably 90% of the time to compose if only because the standing position is so much more comfortable!
Cheers, Bob.
I've had mine for about six years now. It has been a terrific performer. The only mod I've done to mine was to immediately replace the gg with a Canham gg/fresnel combo. Mine has seen field duty in extremes of heat, cold, altitude and humidity (alpine desert in the Sierra Nevada and a trek to Bodie, Lands' End beach in San Francisco, shooting in the snow at Swallow Falls, Maryland (not far from Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright house)). I have never had a problem with humidity or aridness affecting the camera. It still looks good even after six years of backpacking, shooting portraits in the studio, and being ridden hard and put away wet. For the money, you can't do better.
No comment on the berlebach, as I use a Bogen carbon-fiber pod with the Shen Hao. I know lots of folks who are very happy with them, but as previously mentioned, get your hands on one and play with it if possible before you commit, to make sure it is really what you want.
I've had my Shen Hao for almost a year. Well actually it's a Sunfoto knockoff. As far as movements go, it's an awesome camera to work with. I really liked it to learn what movements did what as it had everything. The workmanship was shoddy; I lost nuts, knobs fell off, the bed was extremely sloppy when extended. I checked out a real Shen-Hao from Badger and found the build quality to be better, but not that much better.
At this point I'm using the original 4x5 that I bought from Adorama's used dept - an Osaka wood field. It (with a little modification) has all the movements that the Shen Hao has except rear shift, which I don't need. It's lighter and the construction feels more solid. The back is just a little sloppy but not as sloppy as the entire bed construction of the Shen Hao.
Both cameras work very well with my lens choices: 75mm, 135mm, 240mm, 400mm-T. I'd like to have a little more close focusing ability to which end I just ordered the wista extension tube set. The only thing that is really difficult is the macro shots where I can see the benefit of rear standard focusing. This is where I start dreaming of ebony or arca-swiss. But for all regular scenics, both the Osaka and the Shen-Hao are great learning tools and reasonable entry points in terms of price.
Hah, I already responded to this thread in December. Silly resurfacing threads. I'll keep the stuff below just because I wrote a lot of crap, but.. .yeah. Egg on my face.
I'm absolutely thrilled with mine. There's nothing about it that I regret, and in particular I'm very glad that it has the shift movement on the back (unlike, for example, the toyo 45CF or tachihara), which I end up using quite. I find the range of movements is ample (my lenses run out of coverage before my camera runs out of movements), and I use a fair bit of movements, either to isolate subjects with selective focus, or to control perspective for architecture, and of course depth of field control in landscapes. I have the bag bellows and I find it necessary if I'm going to use any large movements with my 90mm grandagon (caltar labelled). For a typical landscape shot with just a bit of front tilt and slight composition fine tuning with few millimeters of shift/rise I don't have to switch to the bag bellows - the standard one is fine.
No comment - I didn't get the viewer. It might make low down compositions easier, which is the only thing I find very difficult (not a Shen Hao flaw, just a problem in general with view cameras).
Can't comment much on that; I've used it in -30C weather at home, and in mild ocean spray / rain sprinkles on the west coast, and it's as good as new. (I've only had it for about 4 months, but it's gone on two long road trips and has seen fairly heavy use).How is the camera holding up? I like to shoot very early in the day, still damp and misty out. Has the camera endured the moisture without warping?
I'm using a manfrotto 055B with a low end but fairly solid pan/tilt head (can't remember the exact model number). I think USAians call the tripod a bogen 3021 or something like that. It's not huge (it probably wouldn't hold a 600mm f/4 or an 8x10 very easily) but it's perfectly suited to my shen hao.Also curious about tripod choice. I just love the wooden variety and am very close to splurging for a berlebach. Any berlebach users out there who wish to share their sucess or disappointment with this tripod. Thanks to all, happy shooting.
If I were to complain about things these would be my complaints (but they were parts of the compromise I knew I was making when I bought the camera in the first place, so they don't bother me at all):
1. 360mm maximum bellows. No extreme macro for me, although if I ever get the urge I'll get something like the nikkor 120 and a close up diopter or two which should be good. I have done > 1:1 macro with my 90mm lens, so it's not totally inadequate in this regard - just not made for 5:1 or anything ridiculous like that. This also limits long lens use - I haven't tried a 300 but I think I would be able to use one, but that's the limit. Again, no big deal, I knew about it to start with and I'm really quite happy with my 210mm lens.
2. Need to use bag bellows for 90mm with large movements. This isn't unusual, but there are some expensive higher end field cameras that let you get more movement out of the stock bellows. The tachihara apparently does to. Whatever; the bag bellows is relatively cheap ($99) and easy to switch.
3. It's not totally rock solid at long bellows extensions (though I'm not sure how this compared to other wood fields - I suspect it's similar). I've never had a bad image because of it, so it's not bad, just something you have to be careful of. With my 210mm lens focused near infinity or on something at sort of a normal distance (e.g. 10 feet) it's solid, I'm talking about near maximum extension here. It locks down tight though; this is just a function of the wooden rails vibrating when they are totally racked out. Again it's never affected an image, you just have to take some care when doing close up work.
4. The way it came to me from badger graphic, the rear standard wouldn't lock down tight. The washer that provides friction to the locking mechanism wasn't thick enough to give it enough tension when you tighten it up (using a lever), so I had to add an additional washer to fill in the space and allow it to tighten fully. This was a very easy repair to do (you just do it by hand by moving the rear standard forward a bit and then unscrewing the locking lever, then add the washer, and put the locking lever back in place), but I had to do some searching to get the right kind of washer. An alternate way to fix it is to move the locking lever to another hole on the, uhh, locking nut thing, which lets you turn it further, but this causes the lever to protrude from the back when locked down which is sort of annoying. I opted to find the right (odd) sized washer, which I actually did by finding two washers (one with the right inner diameter, and one with the right outer diameter) which fit perfectly inside one another to make a single bigger washer. I think badger graphic will do this repair for free if you buy from them. I had them send me a washer but they sent the wrong one accidentally, so I just went to the hardware store. The length of this makes this sound like a bigger issue than it was - it really didn't bother me, it was a very simple fix and now it's rock solid. Apparently it's an issue other people have had though so I figured I'd give you a heads up on it.
But I want to make it perfectly clear that I've only mentioned these things so you can make an informed decision. They don't bother me in the slightest, and I have no regrets in getting the Shen Hao.
I love mine.Bought it from Badger, and on my sample the finish, fit, and hardware are perfect.Only have a !50mm Nikkor W for it.All my other lenses are dedicated to my 8x10.I use a bogen 3221/3045 combo tripod wise for it.Also when I ordered it, I got the fresnel ground glass option for it, and am glad I did.
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