info on 4x5 Sinar copy camera?

[Greg]

Anyone have any info on the 4x5 Sinar Copy Camera? My search for info on it turned up to be a dead end. I believe it was made for Museums for copying paintings and artworks. I don't believe it had any movements but could be wrong on that.
thanks

[Bob Salomon]

Don’t know what Sinar’s was like but here is a picture of Linhof’s. Bellows draw might be different but features must be similar.

https://www.linhofstudio.com/catalog..._RD1_a1308.jpg

[Drew Wiley]

Minus the tilts & swings. I've only seen catalog pictures of it. Everybody I know used a regular Sinar P or even F. Why go looking for something less versatile which probably cost more due to its rarity? If someone didn't know how to zero detents or marking on a regular Sinar, why would they know how to make it parallel to a painting?

[Greg]

The camera would have been permanently mounted on a copy stand in our town's Museum. Hauling my 4x5 Norma back and forth every time I want to use it there and having to re-aligning it on the Linhof copy stand's baseboard has become tedious for me. Alas, hoped that the camera was cheaper than a F in that it did not have any movements, and definitely it was not a rarity. Looks like I will have to stick to using my Norma.

[Bob Salomon]

The camera would have been permanently mounted on a copy stand in our town's Museum. Hauling my 4x5 Norma back and forth every time I want to use it there and having to re-aligning it on the Linhof copy stand's baseboard has become tedious for me. Alas, hoped that the camera was cheaper than a F in that it did not have any movements, and definitely it was not a rarity. Looks like I will have to stick to using my Norma.

That one I showed you was very expensive.
Cameras like these don’t have movements but the front and back are very carefully aligned and their parallelism doesn’t change while focusing. That is not true for normal view cameras and is the reason Bill Ziegler developed the Zigaline system.

[Drew Wiley]

So what, Bob? How does that guarantee parallelism with the original to begin with? Maybe today one could use an extremely precise laser measuring device projecting the 4 corners of the original to four fixed points on the camera back. Not then. And there's no guarantee the original painting and frame itself is dead flat, or even the wall. I'd rather use, and have used, a good loupe and onboard movements to correct flatness visually. Film itself doesn't fit dead flat in the holder either. High quality repro would be done with a big copy camera. This kind of camera is really a small niche. Zigaline was a toy.

[Bernice Loui]

"Zigaline" was not a toy, it was a hokey-jokey item that baited more than a few into believe that "thing" could work...... at all.

Bernice

Zigaline was a toy.

[neil poulsen]

So what, Bob? How does that guarantee parallelism with the original to begin with? . . .

No copy camera is going to be perfect. But, I think the idea was, they're going to be reliably close enough. The fact that the Linhof in the photo was designed and marketed suggests that there was a need for something that was reliably close enough. And, I think there's a general consensus that Linhof manufactured cameras to fairly demanding tolerances.

I'm sure one can use a conventional 4x5 for copy work. But in doing so, it's possible that they could become inadvertently misaligned. I don't think that's the case with a camera that's designed as a copy camera.

As I recall, I think that Cambo also made a 4x5 intended for copy work.

[Tin Can]

Maybe....

or a Custom


http://www.glennview.com/sinar.htm

http://glennview.com/jpgs/sinar/trip...orma/big_1.jpg

http://glennview.com/jpgs/sinar/trip...orma/big_4.jpg

[LabRat]

Probably made to just stay on a copy stand...

Steve K