Exposure wide open barrel lenses?

[Gene McCluney]

I know a lot of you folks like to shoot wide-open with classic lenses. Probably a lot of you do this without any kind of shutter attached, Packard, or otherwise. I was just contemplating how most of you do this when the exposure required, using modern films is usually in the fractions of a second? Average old lens wide open hovers around F8. This is too much light to have time to remove and replace a lens cap with ISO 100 film. Share with all of us your techniques.

[Hugo Zhang]

Gene,

Jim Galli has a trick. I have to use a Packard shutter.

[Gene McCluney]

Gene,

Jim Galli has a trick. I have to use a Packard shutter.

Yes, a Packard shutter, but even with that, one is flirting with overexposure because a Packard is not capable of a speed faster than about 1/25 of a second at best. F8 with ISO 100 film would generally call for a shutter speed of 1/250 or 1/400 or so, without bellow factor. Do you all just "deal" with dense negatives, and pull your development? Lowest speed LF film (other than possibly ortho/litho) would be ISO 25 or 50 from Efke, right? Do any of you use neutral density filters?

[jnantz]

gene

i either use a graflex slr or a speed graphic, both
have built in shutters

john

[Kerry L. Thalmann]

Gene,

If you have a Sinar camera, or can adapt your front standard to accept a Sinar shutter, it's a great solution for use with barrel lenses. The top speed is "only" 1/60, but that has proven adequate for my needs - although I don't usually shoot wide open and even if I did, most of my barrel ULF lenses have max. apertures in the f9 - f14 range. You get nice accurate shutter speeds from 32 sec. to 1/60, plus "B". One other potential issue - if you're using REALLY big lenses (as many of the fast old portrait lenses are), the throat of Sinar shutter might not be big enough to accommodate shooting wide open.

Kerry

[Jan_6568]

I use old compur shutter for RR lens. I just ordered adapter rings and mounted RR cells in the shutter. Of course the lens does not look as nice as it used to look in brass finish, but it works perfectly well.
For two other classic lenses I have, Bush Bis-Telar and Puyo_de Pulligny The Adjustable Landscape Lens, I use Ilex #4 shutter. I ordered custom adapter rings to front-mount the lenses in the Ilex, the entire lens goes into the front opening of the shutter. I was using Packard for Bis-Telar for some time. The Tachihara I had those days did not allow to install packard behind the lens so I had to mount it in front of the lens using Cokin filter adapter. It did not work well - first it had light leaks, second it was quite unstable and third Packard was giving only one exposure time around 1/20 sec.

Jan

[Kerik Kouklis]

Neutral density filters to "stop" the lens down.

[Kerry L. Thalmann]

Jan brings up a good point, if the lens is small enough to be front mounted in a large shutter, that's a great cost-effective option. I bought a Compound No. 5 shutter for this purpose. I got it at a bargain price as it was missing the built-in aperture blades. I suspect someone tried a soak-in-lighter-fluid CLA at some point that destroyed the original aperture blades. That's fine for front mounting as you use the diaphragm (or waterhouse stops) of the barrel mount lenses. I've seen other Compound shutters with missing aperture blades on occasion (the original blades were made from paper and can be damaged/destroyed if handled improperly). If your goal is front mounting lenses, it would be worth it to try to locate one.

Again, there are size limitations and the potential for mechanical vignetting when front mounting barrel lenses. The biggest shutter I've seen for this purpose is the long discontinued Compur Electronic 5FS. Just make sure you get a working controller box with the shutter. It's a beast, but if you're working with fast old portrait lenses, I'm guessing weight isn't your highest priority.

Kerry

[jss]

i try to pick a film speed and light that's close to 1/8 sec. then i can usually hit it with a black kitchen towel draped over the barrel. i have a packard shutter and a newly acquired universal lens iris mount, so i'm working on mating the two together. something slightly fancier

[Jan Pedersen]

Gene, you may want to look for Luc shutters too. Front mounted and comes in various sizes. Only one speed in addtion to bulb about 1/25sec. works great with slow film such as Efkes 25