Horseman 6x9 holder problem

[Stefan Lungu]

Hello everybody,

After putting up my Crown ( some tape on some dubious bellows parts, stripping the leather and letting the wood shine - hope you don't mind ) I wanted to do some test shots with the setup. Since I do not have a darkroom yet, I got myself a 6x9 rollfilm holder and shot a film trough. Now, I lost about one and a half frames at the start. I found out I should get the film start arrow to be seen trough the hole in the plate - thanks to the forum. But I also had some strange spacing problems and advancing the film only works when I also handle the little center lever. I think I only made it somehow work, but not the right way. Can anybody explain the operation - or a source of a user manual. When working with the Mamiya RB and backs, I found it pretty intuitive, but this time I somehow find it a little problematic.

Thanks, Stefan

[Stefan Lungu]

Well, after I got my negatives back, I noticed two more problems. One is a vertical line that comes trough almost all of the images :
http://www.stefanlungu.net/mff/vertical.jpg
and one problem at the last image, a fogging on more of half of the frame, this time horizontal :
http://www.stefanlungu.net/mff/horizontal.jpg
Any idea what could have caused these ? I think I can rule out the bellows, since they are pretty straight, but what about the back/slider or camera/back ? Some kind of operator error ?

Thanks, Stefan

[DJGainer]

The links you posted are broken. But what it sounds like to me is that you don't have a firm seal between the back and the holder. The vertical line may be due to lack of flatness of the film at the film plane.

These are just guesses though, and seeing actual pictures of the negatives will help.

[ic-racer]

Light leaks somewhere. Pretty common when putting an old bellows camera back in to service. Leaks could be from the bellows, improper seal between the 6x9 back and the camera back, bad light trap on the 6x9 back's dark slide, among other things.

[Stefan Lungu]

Ok, I'll try the img tags with flickr. Hope this works for everybody :
- the great fogging on the last image
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3347/3295029607_25c1c57107.jpg
- the vertical line on almost all images
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3463/3295029561_04d9d2eca8.jpg
Hope you can see them now and maybe give me a clue about where to look.

Thanks, Stefan

[mandoman7]

I would guess that its a light trap problem, as you've mentioned. It could be that the worse of the 2 negs got exposure while the film is being advanced, and the other only briefly when pressure was placed on the slide during entry. The felt or whatever the fabric is could have gotten worn down and be letting light in at certain times, such as when the slide is being inserted or when its out and there's direct sunlight.

I would find a very dark room, take the lens off, and shine a flashlight through the slide opening while looking through the front of the camera. If the room is dark, you'll see light if there's a problem with the holder.

The paper in 120 film is a pretty amazing light blocker usually. If there's a problem with your film handling it will be at the beginning of the role and appear as leaks from the edges and rounded. Camera leakage also would not look like your examples, but more broadly shaped. I've shot a lot of 120 and had my misfortunes...


JY