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Thread: What is the best orientation to mount your lenses?

  1. #11

    Join Date
    Feb 2006
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    3,142

    Re: What is the best orientation to mount your lenses?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Stahlke View Post
    Hmmm... I like the way you think. I may have to give all my lenses a 90 degree twist.
    With cameras like a Deardorff V8, you have four orientations for the lensboard.
    One man's Mede is another man's Persian.

  2. #12
    Analog Photographer Kimberly Anderson's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2009
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    658

    Re: What is the best orientation to mount your lenses?

    I like to have the aperture/shutter speeds visible from both sides and I like to have the shutter release pointing towards the right. Fortunately all of my shutters allow such an orientation. I too wondered the same thing you did, but after working with several lenses in several different orientations, this way made the most sense. I am glad to see that others have gravitated towards similar solutions.

  3. #13

    Join Date
    Sep 1998
    Location
    Oregon now (formerly Austria)
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    3,397

    Re: What is the best orientation to mount your lenses?

    To answer the original question:

    Recessed lensboards often make it difficult to operate the setting / cocking controls. I have a 90mm and a 75mm in recessed boards and use the end of the cable release to do the settings for aperture and shutter speed. I can cock the shutter with the tip of a finger.

    I have a couple of cameras on which my Technika-style boards can be reversed. With boards with an off-center hole, this give me a bit more front rise and comes in very handy when needed. If I were designing a camera, I would provide for a lensboard that could be mounted in any orientation. It would have an off-center hole so that one could get a bit more shift as well.

    I like my cable-release socket on the upper left (when looking at the front of the lens). That way, I can get a nice curve in the cable and press in the opposite direction as the plunger in the shutter socket. I believe this eliminates possible shake better. But, I push the cable release with my thumb from the bottom. If I held the release in my fist and pushed down with my thumb, I would want the opposite orientation.

    I try to mount the lens so that the shutter speed/aperture scales face up and down on the shutters that have both top and bottom scales. I'm often under the camera a bit and being able to look up at the scales is helpful. For those lenses that don't have two sets of scales, I usually leave them at the top, and then use a dentist's mirror to read the scale if the camera is too high. Older shutters (Supramatics mostly for me, but I think Ilex, et al. are similar) have the scales on the front instead of on the barrel and are much easier to deal with.

    Best,

    Doremus

  4. #14

    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    Plymouth, UK
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    677

    Re: What is the best orientation to mount your lenses?

    Just to prove what a newbie to my 4x5 camera I am, I discovered this afternoon that my Toyo lens boards can be inserted in any one of the 4 orientations. I didn't think they could because my bag bellows can only be inserted in 2 and I wrongly assumed that the lens panels were the same. Oh well, another thing learnt.

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