Wanderlust 4x5 P&S

[Brian Bullen]

Steve, once again, thank you for providing this really useful information.
Cheers!

[Dan Fromm]

At 3 feet a 90 at f8 should give you half a foot DoF, and a whole foot at 16.

Did you use DofMaster? I ask because I just asked it about the setup and got your answers.

But and however they're insane. The CoC DofMaster uses for 4x5 is good for contact printing, will allow no enlargement. What's the point of shooting 4x5 if all you can do is print contacts?

[Oren Grad]

What's the point of shooting 4x5 if all you can do is print contacts?

Dan, I contact print my 4x5's; rarely, if ever, enlarge them at this point. A chacun son gout.

That said, I don't expect results from the TW in hand-held use at close range to be satisfactory for my taste, and maybe not in hand-held use at all. But an ultrasimple, ultralight 4x5 to perch on top of a tripod is also a useful tool for me. Again, and reiterating what should be obvious: there's no one best way.

[Tin Can]

I had to look that phrase up, my biggest HS regret is NOT taking French!

http://french.about.com/od/vocabular...n-son-gout.htm

[Dan Fromm]

Oren, I first met the phrase "chacun a son goût." when I was a schoolboy learning (naturally) schoolboy French. Each has his own taste. Anglophones confuse the preposition "a" (means "to") with "a" the first person singular present of the verb avoir (means he/she/it has).

You're right, there's no disputing tastes.

[Steve Pitchford]

[QUOTE=Ben Syverson;1271246]One thing to note is that the Angulon ƒ/6.8 varied… a lot. It was manufactured over a very long time period. The "bad" ones should be good for contact prints and small enlargements. The "good" ones can stand up to 5x or 10x enlargement. Though they all have slightly weak corners wide open. The ƒ/8 and ƒ/6.8 symmetrical-ish designs are of course incredible across the field.

PS, we have a significant chunk of cameras assembled... We may ship these in smaller (250-500) batches just to clear room in the studio. It feels really great to look at a giant stack of cameras. At points, it felt like we'd never get a 4x5 camera without tilts and swings.

Ben,
Great news! Great progress.
Also, I have to agree with you on the choice of lens for the Travel Wide. The 90mm Angulon is light, compact, and will work with several different shutters. There were so many because the lens was a known workhorse. Uncoated lenses produced before WWII were not often precisely manufactured. Coated lenses came to market about 1960. The coated lenses can be better especially for color. A good discussion of the Angulon lenses exist on this site (LFP) posted byThalmann on 9, Oct 2010 These coated lenses have serial numbers in the 6,000,000 range made from about 1960 forward. Anyone interested can check the "Age of Lenses" chart at http://www.schneideroptics.com/info/age_of_lenses/, to check their own lens mfg. period. Just note that Schneider was not known for accurate record keeping. Some lenses were said to be better due to quality control inspections of production lenses for the best ones, which would then be sold to another company such as Linhof (Technika series). I have one of the Linholf lens, serial no. 5,291,xxx; had it in a drawer for 20 years and just took it out for the Travelwide investment adventure. It would barely fire, so I had it CLA'd by Joe at Tempe Camera - came out good as new. I also have the Illex Calumet Wide Field 90mm lens, which I love and use with my Wista. I have closely compared these two lens for coverage and sharpness. Using a Bogen tripod and cable release and equal f/stops, developed at the same time. To me the results appear to be equal, almost identical. The only difference I could tell was the Calumet WF 90 did pull up the foreground just a bit, but object definition and contrast were equal. I have a beautiful Wista and several lenses but I don't always have time, so for me the TravelWide is all about lite weight and speed, with the exception of when I'm using it as a Pinhole camera.
Keep up the great work.

Happy trails,
SteveP

[Corran]

Just as an anecdotal observation, I have two Angulons, one normal and one "Linhof Select." They both perform similarly.

[Drew Bedo]

The only French I know is that phrase from the mid '70s song by Patty Labell.

[Larry Kellogg]

The only French I know is that phrase from the mid '70s song by Patty Labell.

Ok, that will get your face slapped. C'est pas gentil.

[Ben Syverson]

I've always loved the phrase contre-jour. I love that literally, it means "against the day"—and that Pynchon used the literal translation as the title for his mind-boggling novel of science and anarchy.

In any case, it sure beats "backlit."