Shutterless lenses/ panhard Shutters

[Amos]

At the risk of being boring and trying peoples patience can I explore the topic of Barrel Lenses. Here in the UK and no doubt in the rest of the world people are throwing out copy cameras in favour of scanners with the result that some fantastic “Apro” lens in barrel mounts are almost being given away.

I have acquired a number of these and have often read about using a cap method or a basic shutter like the Packard. I have used the cap method with studio flash, everybody thought I was mad. Even using a slow film like FP4 at min aperture its never more that 1 sec outside, although using ND filters could be the answer. The Packard shutters, I am told that they only work at one speed and that’s never the same twice.

At the moment I am using the Sinar Studio shutter, however a Sinar is not an ideal outside camera, so I want to get rid of it. I would like to use the crown graphic, the speed graphic is great with lens up to about 200 MM but anything longer makes the thing droop.

So could some kind person please go through their exposure sequence in a simple idiot proof step by step way, and I will be eternally grateful

[Alan Davenport]

If you wear a hat, every lens has a shutter.

[Gene McCluney]

The Packard "type" of shutter is very consistent. But some of that consistency depends on your skill. If you practice using the shutter in instantaneous mode, you can get quite good at doing regular repeatable exposures. (Approximately 1/30 depending on shutter size) There are other options. A Thornton-Pickard roller blind shutter is one. Another alternative is using a slower film, such as that Efke/Adox ISO 25 film, and a hat over the lens which you remove for the required exposure time. You can also have your graphic arts lenses mounted in leaf-shutters, or front mounted onto a leaf shutter (Copal, Syncro-Compur, Compound, Ilex) if they are not too big.

You are, in general, not going to be able to do stop-action type of photography with many of the choices. But a large view camera is more suited to contemplative, carefully composed vignettes of life.