I recently bought a 75mm Goerz Hypergon ($1200 with a camera, for those keeping track of the going rate), and have some questions about it...

How freely should the fan spin? Mine spins a little with each puff from the bulb, probably enough to work fine, but should it spin really freely? Should I lube it with wet or dry silicon?

Would a more modern center density filter work effectively? Say, something made for a metrogon? Or would using one made for a different lens likely cause rings of lightness/darkness because they have different fall-off rates?

It came with a very nice 8x10 Seneca Improved View Camera. The Seneca is very light (7 pounds, as opposed to 12.5 for my Kodak 2d and 11 for my custom mesquite 8x10). The bag bellows has a maximum (no, not minimum, I mean maximum!) extension of 4.5 inches, and looks like it could be factory installed. Does anyone know whether Seneca produced this as a wide-angle version, possibly just for the hypergon? (How many other lenses could there be for a 4.5 inch bellows?) Or did someone just do a really nice conversion?

Any other advice for using this lens would be much appreciated. (At last I can start thinking of my 6 1/4 inch Wollensak as a telephoto...)

- Mark Sawyer, Tucson, AZ