Nikkor SW 90mm f/4.5 Lens Board?

[AllNoAll]

Hey All,

I just ordered the Nikkor SW 90mm f/4.5 for my Shen-Hao HZX4x5-II. Can I use a flat lens board with the standard bellows, or am I going to need to get something else to make this lens work?

Thanks!

[Alan Klein]

I'm not familiar with a Shen Hao. But my Chamonix 45N-1 takes this lens with a standard flat board. However, I have a Chamonix modified bag bellows not the standard bellows and it's still a tight fit. You can try it when you get it swapping a board from another lens and then make a decision what you need. Good luck.

[Mick Fagan]

I have the Shen Hao HZX45-IIA, it should be alright with the f/4.54 90mm, I run a Fujinon f/8 90mm and for most of my work with that lens, the standard bellows is perfect. If however I need to use a lot of movement, then I switch to my bag bellows; takes about 2 minutes at most. By switching to the bag bellows I'm not pushing the folded pleats of the standard bellows to their limit. The bag bellows folds flat and is easy as anything to carry. I once tried that same Nikon SW 90mm, but I had my bag bellows on and the price was too much, so I didn't go ahead with it.

I also have a Fujinon f/5.6 SWD 65mm with very little movement available. For that lens if I move the front standard more than 5mm up or down, then the standard bellows are being contorted so much it is frightening, so I always use bag bellows with the 65mm.

Very versatile camera, undervalued in the second hand market.

You should be fine until you get to extreme rise/fall of the front standard, or you require rear shift and a bit of rise/fall of the front.

[AllNoAll]

I have the Shen Hao HZX45-IIA, it should be alright with the f/4.54 90mm, I run a Fujinon f/8 90mm and for most of my work with that lens, the standard bellows is perfect. If however I need to use a lot of movement, then I switch to my bag bellows; takes about 2 minutes at most. By switching to the bag bellows I'm not pushing the folded pleats of the standard bellows to their limit. The bag bellows folds flat and is easy as anything to carry. I once tried that same Nikon SW 90mm, but I had my bag bellows on and the price was too much, so I didn't go ahead with it.

I also have a Fujinon f/5.6 SWD 65mm with very little movement available. For that lens if I move the front standard more than 5mm up or down, then the standard bellows are being contorted so much it is frightening, so I always use bag bellows with the 65mm.

Very versatile camera, undervalued in the second hand market.

You should be fine until you get to extreme rise/fall of the front standard, or you require rear shift and a bit of rise/fall of the front.

Thank you so much! This is perfect! The lens doesn't arrive until Friday. I guesstimated today where infinity would be with this 90mm, and I see what you are saying. It most likely will work, but my movements will be pretty limited. The recessed lens board will only give me a little over a cm more clearance forward, which honestly won't improve the movement options too much on this camera. I think you are correct in that bag bellows really are the best option if you want a full range of movements. I'll have to wait a bit, as this purchase has maxed out my budget for the time being, and the bag bellows for this camera are not cheap. Thanks again!

[Mick Fagan]

At least you can purchase bag bellows, for some cameras this is no longer an option new, only secondhand or after market.

I see what you mean about pricey. I just checked around and considering I paid around $85 AUD delivered to my door in Australia via Badger Graphics in the USA for my bag bellows, the price increase since then is steep. That said, I have had my bag bellows for quite some time.

Below is my Shen Hao with my Fujinon 90mm f/8. with rear shift applied, the rear view shows the advantage of bag bellows as one just moves the leather bag around so it isn't in-between the lens and film; the lens board is at the zero detent mark. Third picture shows standard bellows and bag bellows side by side.

234563 234564 234565

[xkaes]

I guesstimated today where infinity would be with this 90mm...

You can check it out on line, but I bet the flange focal length is closer to 100mm. Most wide-angle lenses have long flange focal lengths. All of the Fujinon 90mm lenses (there were eight of them) had flange focal lengths of 99-101mm. I have have no problem at all with my 90mm f8 in terms of movement -- thanks to the longer flange focal length -- but I can't speak about your particular camera. And, as mentioned, I think the only obstacle you might have is the regular bellows. You might be surprised. Good luck.

[AllNoAll]

You can check it out on line, but I bet the flange focal length is closer to 100mm. Most wide-angle lenses have long flange focal lengths. All of the Fujinon 90mm lenses (there were eight of them) had flange focal lengths of 99-101mm. I have have no problem at all with my 90mm f8 in terms of movement -- thanks to the longer flange focal length -- but I can't speak about your particular camera. And, as mentioned, I think the only obstacle you might have is the regular bellows. You might be surprised. Good luck.

Yep, it looks like the flange focal length for this lens is 97.4. I got the lens, and it is great having that 4.5 aperture. It is relatively heavy. With the normal below I have a good range to most movements except front rise and fall, and rear shift. At $300 I'm not sure I want to invest just yet into a bag bellows, and will just see how limiting it is running the lens on the normal bellows. I do wish the Shen-hao standard bellows were more like the Chamonix "hybrid" bellows. I think a recessed lensboard for a copal 0 shutter is just too limiting. I'd hate always trying to fiddle inside the board to set the aperture.

[xkaes]

I have one recessed board -- about 1/2" -- and it is awkward, but workable. The good news may be -- depending on your typical subject matter -- the wider your lens' angle of view, the less movement you may need. A little goes a long way. With my wider lenses I tend to mostly use tilts & swings, as opposed shifts, which is not as much of an obstacle for my bellows.

[Bernice Loui]

Much depends on how the 90mm lens is used on your field camera. Majority of 4x5 field folders can work a 90mm lens direct on or slight camera movements with not a lot of difficulty. Once greater demands on camera movements are needed, that is when a bag bellows is mandatory and often presses any field folder to it's capability limits.

All this is image goal centric as to what the lens/camera must do to meet these goals. Standard bellows on the camera might work no issues depending on image needs.

As for recessed lens boards, avoid when possible as they greatly limit access to the shutter controls makes using the shutter more difficult in many ways.
This is precisely the problem with using the 47mm and 38mm Super Angulon XL on the Linhof Technikardan 23s, to gain full lens image circle capability both these lenses Must be used with a recessed lens board and bag bellows.
234708

No issues with the 115mm Grandagon on the 5x7 Sinar Norma. Flat lens board with bag bellows allows camera movement to the limits of the lens image circle with no camera imposed limitations. Example, full rise front, full drop rear with a bit of camera tilt then front/rear standards tilt adjusted to achieve the rise needed to get this entire tree into the image area with minimal geometric distortion.
234706

Tree image:
234707


Bernice










Thank you so much! This is perfect! The lens doesn't arrive until Friday. I guesstimated today where infinity would be with this 90mm, and I see what you are saying. It most likely will work, but my movements will be pretty limited. The recessed lens board will only give me a little over a cm more clearance forward, which honestly won't improve the movement options too much on this camera. I think you are correct in that bag bellows really are the best option if you want a full range of movements. I'll have to wait a bit, as this purchase has maxed out my budget for the time being, and the bag bellows for this camera are not cheap. Thanks again!

[Mick Fagan]

This is my Fujinon SWD f/5.6 65mm in a recessed board on my Shen Hao HZX45-IIA. The recess is 10mm from memory.

As you can see, it is fiddly as anything, but doable. I mostly use a pencil to shift the aperture ring as I cannot get my fingers in there.

In case you are unaware, on this camera you can slide the rear standard forward so you will not have the bed showing up in pictures, as I've done here.

The filter on the front is a Heliopan centre graduated filter, in case you were wondering.

234723

[peter brooks]

The curious case of the rotated jpg...



234708


How annoying it is when a photo doesn't display in the correct orientation... even though it looked fine before it was uploaded.

Why does it happen? As we all know, jpg images (digital photos particularly) also contain exif data such as image size, shutter speed, aperture etc. One item recorded in the exif data is Orientation. This can have one of nine different values. Eight of the values describe which sides of the visual image relate to both the first row and column of the image data (which can be visualised as a grid), and the ninth value means that orientation information is 'not given'.

Most modern operating systems now interpret orientation data correctly but some software (or portions of software) may still have problems with it. For instance it is perfectly feasible that the a piece of software may show an image in the correct orientation in an upload routine but then display it incorrectly within another screen (in a post for instance).

To add further complication the images at fault are often from mobile phones. They sometimes seem to have their own idea of what is up/down/left/right, and it is said that some may even write the orientation data incorrectly.

The solution? If you can, always download the images to a trusted machine first and check (or rather force) the orientation to be what you want it to be.

I use (and have done for years) the free image viewer FastStone (https://www.faststone.org/)* on Windows to browse images in folders (it also does batch conversions which is pretty cool). When I have saved images from a phone onto the PC I do one of two things:

- If they are obviously in the wrong orientation I rotate them until they are correct
- Even if they look to be in the correct orientation I rotate them 90 degrees clockwise, then back 90 degrees anti-clockwise. This invariably does the trick.

In both cases save the image afterwards.

Apologies for wandering far off-topic but I thought it was worth mentioning :)


* I have no affilation or connection with this software. Other software and operating systems are available, and hopefully the theory above will give the same result. YMMV, try it and see!
** This probably doesn't help people posting directly from their phones...
*** I believe vBulletin v5 may try a bit harder to orientate images correctly?