Anyone ever try to 'trick out' a Toyo Field lens board for architectural subjects?

[JW Dewdney]

So elated to have a Toyo Field now - i can leave the big(ger) cameras at home. But i'm doing some architectural subjects for a new project and frequently need MORE than the max. 20mm lens rise. 40mm is more typical. So I'm THINKING - to make this work - I'm going to need to find a solution like using a recessed board with an offset hole (20mm or so up). At any rate - not a lot of luck finding a BLANK recessed board.... but maybe I can get something made or I'll kludge something. So the question I'd put to you is THIS: "Has anyone here found other, more ingenious solutions to this problem?". Thanks

[Kirk Gittings]

Not me but a very successful AP in my area used Toyo Fields for years so there must be a solution.

[JW Dewdney]

Thanks Kirk - well that's encouraging news... will keep hammering away at this...

[Joseph Dickerson]

You can get more rise on a Toyo field camera (45A/AX?) by using indirect rise. Tilt the camera up, adjust front and back to vertical, and you've increased the effective rise by a lot. Only restriction is the bellows losing some flexibility with shorter lenses.

Toyo 45A/AX (was there an AR in there somewhere too?) field cameras are great.

JD

[JW Dewdney]

thanks Joseph - but I'd rather eat my hand than deal with the tilt trick. just not worth the hassle. I'm into ergonomics (another way of saying 'i'm lazy') ! good suggestion but for the volume of work I'm doing it would get old really fast - so that's why i'm thinking I'd rather get a custom made board or modify the camera somehow...

[Brian C. Miller]

thanks Joseph - but I'd rather eat my hand than deal with the tilt trick. just not worth the hassle.

EAT THE HAND!! EAT THE HAND!!

That little "tilt trick" results in some totally awsome rise! I use it with a three-way pan head, and it's very fast to do it. To make it really fast, put a bubble level on the front and rear standards. Zap! Humongous rise! Put some tiny marks on the body, or use a cardboard or plastic angle, or just a length of string from A to B, and you've totally got it. No problems!

"Dear Abbey: I wanna be an architectural photographer, but I duwanna adjust the camera. What should I do? -- Toyo Man."
"Dear Toyo: MOVE IT BEFORE I COME OVER THERE AND PUT A FOOT UP YO' ASS! You callin' yoself a man and you isn't man enough to move that camera? I'll come over there and beat yo' noggin' wit' my broom, you go spoutin off with that in front of my face! Donchoo you realize that the rear element of any sufficiently wide angle lens is gonna be hittin' the bellows if you use an offset lens board on that camera? Shame on you! You git out there an' put some elbow grease into that photography, and don't you come whinnin' to me about it gettin' old!"

:D

[JW Dewdney]

Yeah i'm aware of the 'bottoming out' effect of the lens rubbing against the bellows for sure - not to worry- don't you think the 'tilt' thing would make that even worse though? thanks for the entertainment in the interim though... the offset lensboard idea still seems better and smarter method to me than a tilt though...

ps - i'm more of a 'has been' than a 'wanna be' though... :) hence the ennui...

[JW Dewdney]

in case the lack of interest in tilting front and back seems overly 'dainty' to you - let me explain: let's say you're setting up a shot that would normally take 15 mins let's say. And now we need to use our 'tilt' method to shift. There's no seamless way of having a look at what the various positions actually look like. For each 4 or 5 mm of shift, you have to change the entire camera angle accordingly, reset the front standard parallel, and then refocus again.. so let's say you're going to do this 5 or 6 times (worst case maybe?) .... no... not a lot of fun. That's what I meant by it 'getting old'. It would probably add about an hour to each shot (again - probably worst case scenario) but if you've done this kind of work before I think you'd see what I mean...

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

No way can you squeeze 20mm of offset on a Toyo recessed hole. A Copal 0 is pretty tight in there, and a Copal 1 will only fit in one orientation. Change cameras or use indirect rise.

[Daniel Stone]

Make your own lensboards where the hole is greatly off-centered(towards the top(so its already "risen" before applying any subsequent rise with the camera movements.)

Otherwise, get a monorail and a lb adapter. Much easier for an AP than a field, IMO...

-Dan

[Oren Grad]

Sounds as though you want something like the late, maybe lamented Toho Eccentric Lens Panel.

[JW Dewdney]

yes well i bought it so i didnt' have to lug a monorail around - i'd rather use that then mess with some silly tilting business... I'll probably try to fab up a few versions of 'offset' lensboards I guess. I may try to recut and thread a new hole for the front standard screw about 1.5 cm lower too... just to get more rise out of the thing (with a recessed board in that case). With the offset hole I'd probably go with a flat board (just to get better offset) at least with the 90 and 120...

but if worse comes to worst I'll prolly just use the field for non-architectural material...

[JW Dewdney]

Sounds as though you want something like the late, maybe lamented Toho Eccentric Lens Panel.

did you maybe mean 'laminated' rather than 'lamented' ? :D
hmmm... i will google it...

[Doremus Scudder]

in case the lack of interest in tilting front and back seems overly 'dainty' to you - let me explain: let's say you're setting up a shot that would normally take 15 mins let's say. And now we need to use our 'tilt' method to shift. There's no seamless way of having a look at what the various positions actually look like. For each 4 or 5 mm of shift, you have to change the entire camera angle accordingly, reset the front standard parallel, and then refocus again.. so let's say you're going to do this 5 or 6 times (worst case maybe?) .... no... not a lot of fun. That's what I meant by it 'getting old'. It would probably add about an hour to each shot (again - probably worst case scenario) but if you've done this kind of work before I think you'd see what I mean...

JW,

I use both techniques, just not on a Toyo... I have a Woodman (bare bones wooden folder with limited movements) that I use a lot for architecture work here in Vienna. It takes Technika boards, most of which come with an offset hole (just thinking... is there an adapter lensboard from Technika to Toyo? That would solve your problem).

Anyway, I have modified the front standard of my Woodman to allow the Technika boards to be mounted upside-down, giving me an extra bit of front rise. This works well in many situations, but is not always enough.

In cases where I need more rise, I use the "point-and-tilt" technique. It's fairly easy and does not take too much extra time. Here's my method:

First, I assume you have some idea of where you want the borders of your image to be, at least roughly, and I assume you have the lens in its highest position (since you tried that first but it wasn't enough rise).

So, while watching the ground glass, tilt your camera up, using your tripod's pan/tilt head, till the image on the ground glass includes slightly more (say 20%) of the top of the image (i.e., bottom of the ground glass) than you want. Lock down the tripod. Tilt the back roughly level using the bubble level. Now, position the front standard roughly parallel to the back using your eyesight. You can get it fairly close this way and you'll refine it later. All this takes much less time than my description has so far.

Now, get under the dark cloth and refine your image. Rough focus, refine back tilt to make sure all is aligned with the grid on your ground glass (this isn't really extra time, since I would do it anyway). Since you pointed a bit too high, you can now use lens fall to reposition the image. If you left enough room when pointing, there will be plenty of room to do this and plenty of room for composing (you don't have to "point-and-tilt" more than once).

All that is left is to refine focus using the lens tilt to make sure the lens standard is positioned as you wish (as you would do anyway, so this isn't extra time either). My woodman has base tilts, making it a reiterative process, but with axis tilts it should be a snap.

There you are: one extra procedure and maybe five minutes spent (I'm much faster than that). Since it's architecture, the building is not likely to move in that time :)

I find this procedure a really good tool, for shift as well as rise, and use it often with cameras that don't have huge movements. I don't mind the extra time spent in trade-off for portability. I bicycle around the city with my camera strapped to my back. The lightweight Woodman is a godsend. I can't imagine doing this with a monorail.

Best,

Doremus

[Struan Gray]

Indirect rise on the Toyo fields isn't so bad if you practice it a bit. It helps if you make it the first movement you apply, and if you avoid maxing out the real rise first, so you have enough movement on the standard for fine tuning.

If you find keeping the standards parallel a chore, extra levels can help, or a ruler to compare the distance between standards top and bottom.


Or just take the big camera, and be glad you have one.

[Joseph Dickerson]

EAT THE HAND!! EAT THE HAND!!

That little "tilt trick" results in some totally awsome rise! I use it with a three-way pan head, and it's very fast to do it. To make it really fast, put a bubble level on the front and rear standards. Zap! Humongous rise! Put some tiny marks on the body, or use a cardboard or plastic angle, or just a length of string from A to B, and you've totally got it. No problems!

"Dear Abbey: I wanna be an architectural photographer, but I duwanna adjust the camera. What should I do? -- Toyo Man."
"Dear Toyo: MOVE IT BEFORE I COME OVER THERE AND PUT A FOOT UP YO' ASS! You callin' yoself a man and you isn't man enough to move that camera? I'll come over there and beat yo' noggin' wit' my broom, you go spoutin off with that in front of my face! Donchoo you realize that the rear element of any sufficiently wide angle lens is gonna be hittin' the bellows if you use an offset lens board on that camera? Shame on you! You git out there an' put some elbow grease into that photography, and don't you come whinnin' to me about it gettin' old!"

:D

Brian,

Nicely put...I wasn't gonna to say anything but really! It ain't that hard. :p

JD

[Richard Wasserman]

Add me to the indirect rise camp. I use it often with a Horseman 45FA which I believe has even less built-in rise than a Toyo. It really is a simple procedure and doesn't add much time to the process. I see it as a very small trade-off for carrying a small lightweight camera—it's no big deal.

[Oren Grad]

did you maybe mean 'laminated' rather than 'lamented' ? :D
hmmm... i will google it...

To be clear, I doubt the Toho contraption, assuming you could even find one, could be easily fit to a Toyo field camera. But the concept seems to be very much to the point.

[JW Dewdney]

Add me to the indirect rise camp. I use it often with a Horseman 45FA which I believe has even less built-in rise than a Toyo. It really is a simple procedure and doesn't add much time to the process. I see it as a very small trade-off for carrying a small lightweight camera—it's no big deal.

Yes - it's FINE if you're just doing the odd shot. But if you're doing them every day for weeks I hope you can see why I would GREATLY prefer to use a monorail... which I WILL do if I can't work it out with the toyo. You probably underestimate the amount of 'test compositions' one needs to do to get a good result. To me it's a really irrational process mechanically speaking... but hey that's me....

I DO appreciate the responses and thought on the matter though... I guess I'll just have to work something out or else go back to my monorails for this work and use the toyo for 'straight' shots..

[JW Dewdney]

To be clear, I doubt the Toho contraption, assuming you could even find one, could be easily fit to a Toyo field camera. But the concept seems to be very much to the point.

Hi Oren - I had a look at it. For me I think it's trying to 'do too much' - I may go with just the offset board or the modification to the standard mentioned earlier (or both!). it seems awkwardly designed though in terms of the alternatives it provides (when if ever would you use it in side or 'down' positions? - at least for my use)...

[Oren Grad]

Hi Oren - I had a look at it. For me I think it's trying to 'do too much' - I may go with just the offset board or the modification to the standard mentioned earlier (or both!).

For sure, an offset board is the simplest way to buy yourself a bit more front rise. Just make sure that your rear cells aren't bumping into anything internally - I imagine a Toyo field should leave you a decent amount of maneuvering room - and that alone should take you a long way. Good luck!

[JW Dewdney]

For sure, an offset board is the simplest way to buy yourself a bit more front rise. Just make sure that your rear cells aren't bumping into anything internally - I imagine a Toyo field should leave you a decent amount of maneuvering room - and that alone should take you a long way. Good luck!


of COURSE... the hole would be positioned so that the rear cell is only pressing against the bellows with moderate pressure at 2cm of rise... that way by default I'll have a useable range of at least 1.5cm up to 3.5 at worst probably. I can always drop the front standard (negative rise) if I want something 'straight on' but I doubt I would ever need a wide angle for that purpose... or i'll just change boards...

[Struan Gray]

Yes - it's FINE if you're just doing the odd shot. But if you're doing them every day for weeks I hope you can see why I would GREATLY prefer to use a monorail...

Which is why I found myself sticking with my Norma, even for landscapes in the field. With my most-used lenses there was very little the Toyo field couldn't do, but the monorail was so much more transparent, and quicker. The penalty is bulk, and a slightly longer setup and strip down for infinity shots with no movements.

[Doremus Scudder]

Yes - it's FINE if you're just doing the odd shot. But if you're doing them every day for weeks I hope you can see why I would GREATLY prefer to use a monorail... which I WILL do if I can't work it out with the toyo. You probably underestimate the amount of 'test compositions' one needs to do to get a good result. To me it's a really irrational process mechanically speaking... but hey that's me....

I DO appreciate the responses and thought on the matter though... I guess I'll just have to work something out or else go back to my monorails for this work and use the toyo for 'straight' shots..

Sounds to me like the Toyo is just not the tool you need for the job unless you can find a workaround. There must be a way to modify the front standard to get more rise, but that might affect folding...

I don't really see how an offset board will get you great amounts of additional rise. On cameras designed to take an offset board, the offset is usually lower than center in "zero" position. Mounting the board upside down then gets you double the offset as extra rise. For a camera designed to have the lens centered in the board, you will only get the offset distance as extra rise. How much can you practically achieve by using an offset board? Is that enough for your purposes?

FWIW, I use a viewing frame or Zone VI viewing filter to compose my shots before I even unpack the camera so I don't have to spend a lot of time moving things around and looking at the ground-glass image "test compositions" to decide if I like a composition.

Maybe you can sell the Toyo and find another folder that has significantly more rise yet is still more portable and lighter than a monorail.

Any suggestions out there?

Best,

Doremus

[JW Dewdney]

Hi Doremus - thanks for the support:

I'm probably just being lazy but seems like the Toyo is close enough for what I want to do that it might be worth a try... I'm just tired of dragging around the big (heavy as hell) sinars and having to drive - it would be nice to get out on a bike for this kind of subject matter... but I'm just trying to have my cake and eat it too. I was hoping there might be some people piping up with some more radical solutions but I'm probably alone in this battle... :) - as for your points:

1. As far as drilling out of the standard to get more rise - it would probably work for me - it WOULD affect folding but that's why you'd have to replace the screws in the 'standard' position before folding... those are my thoughts on that so far...

2. it really looks like i could get 1.5 to 2 cm additional rise (which is all I probably need) with the eccentrically drilled lensboard... though it precludes the use of anything significantly shorter than a 90 it would seem...

3. I like to do things on the ground glass... it's just the way I work... there's enough to do beforehand figuring out what your composition's going to be 'off camera' first anyway... but I think there are little subtleties that crop up from time to time that can really only be resolved by actually looking at the different possibilities on the GG... thirty years of large format has taught me to defer in all cases to the ground glass...!

but no matter - even if it ends up being too much of a compromise for architecture it will be great for other applications where you'd never or rarely use movements (landscape stuff etc)...

[JW Dewdney]

ps - the fuji 6x17 is working out nicely for this application too... something i've been playing with lately... you get one heck of a rise out of it by using it vertically and leveling it out. Though I'm not so in love with the crazy aspect ratio yet...

[Doremus Scudder]

JW,

I checked around a bit, and there is a Technika-to-Toyo field adapter board available (i.e., Technika 96x98mm to Toyo 110x110mm). It may displace the lens forward a few mm.

At any rate, if you had one of those, you could mount the lenses you use most in offset Technika boards and possibly use them with the offeset on the top. You'd have to check this out, though, and make sure that you could either mount the Technika boards upside-down in the adapter or mount the adapter upside-down on your Toyo.

Or, you can cobble up a couple of offset boards and see how they work. FWIW, reversing the board solves my limited rise problems about 80% of the time. For the remaining 20%, I use the "point-and-tilt" technique (which is maybe 5-8% of my architecturals with the field camera). Maybe such a low incidence of having to use that technique will persuade you to try it out a time or two and see if it works for you. It's really not all that complicated and, if you only use it for one shot in ten, may be an acceptable trade-off for the savings in weight (it sure is for me!).

And, even if you compose on the ground glass, you usually only need to "point-and-tilt" once to get the camera roughly pointing in the right direction. If you point-and-tilt with the rise in zero position, you then have even more rise to compose with. Or, you can do like I do; since I usually have the rise maxed out before I point-and-tilt, I deliberately overshoot my intended composition and then use the fall. Whatever works for you.

Best,

Doremus

[JW Dewdney]

Thanks so much for your generous input Doremus -

I DID actually look at the Technika adapter - however the junction between the upper-edge of the board where it mates with the 'master' board is pretty much where I would want to put the hole. It just seems to create an obstruction. So I decided that it wasn't a good option for me (unless I find some weird way around this - I would have to really mess with the master board too - at which point it makes more sense to go back to the 'regular' board - more clearance).

Reversing doesn't make much sense because the Toyo is pretty much a centered lens axis situation on the board. So even though the boards do not seem to be reversible (due to the machining pattern mating surfaces of the boards) - reversing one would give you no benefit. And making an offset board (even if reversible) wouldn't be an advantage because it's only once in a ten year period I would probably ever need a lens 'drop'... that being said - I will probably go ahead and muck around with some offset boards (the only BIG pain with this is that they ALL seem to come pre-drilled so I would need to either fill in the existing hole with fiberglas or else have some kind of light-block (a metal disk?) fabricated...

ergonomically - what I don't like about the 'hunt and peck' solution to composition is that I might miss a fantastic opportunity that I may not have seen using the 'shift/rise' method - I guess it's a luxury in some peoples' eyes... but a pretty strong part of my process since I standardized on sinars back in 97 or so. I knew those cameras would spoil me! :) I will see what happens with the boards in 'plan b' and report back... thanks again

[Oren Grad]

...the only BIG pain with this is that they ALL seem to come pre-drilled so I would need to either fill in the existing hole with fiberglas or else have some kind of light-block (a metal disk?) fabricated...

Bromwell Marketing offers a blank Toyo Field board, item number 1459:

http://www.bromwellmarketing.com/boards.htm

[luis a de santos]

EAT THE HAND!! EAT THE HAND!!

That little "tilt trick" results in some totally awsome rise! I use it with a three-way pan head, and it's very fast to do it. To make it really fast, put a bubble level on the front and rear standards. Zap! Humongous rise! Put some tiny marks on the body, or use a cardboard or plastic angle, or just a length of string from A to B, and you've totally got it. No problems!

"Dear Abbey: I wanna be an architectural photographer, but I duwanna adjust the camera. What should I do? -- Toyo Man."
"Dear Toyo: MOVE IT BEFORE I COME OVER THERE AND PUT A FOOT UP YO' ASS! You callin' yoself a man and you isn't man enough to move that camera? I'll come over there and beat yo' noggin' wit' my broom, you go spoutin off with that in front of my face! Donchoo you realize that the rear element of any sufficiently wide angle lens is gonna be hittin' the bellows if you use an offset lens board on that camera? Shame on you! You git out there an' put some elbow grease into that photography, and don't you come whinnin' to me about it gettin' old!"


I am with Miller 100%

Best

[JW Dewdney]

Bromwell Marketing offers a blank Toyo Field board, item number 1459:

http://www.bromwellmarketing.com/boards.htm

thanks!