Originally Posted by
Asher Kelman
Michael,
These are good points. The fast speeds are really needed using wide open soft focus barrel lenses outdoors in bright light without resorting to ND filters.
I just want to be able to use lenses like the f 4.0 Visual Quality P&S in the outside light and so will need faster speeds. At present, my plan is simply to make a box for one ~4" Packard shutter to slip over a dedicated front mounted adapter for each of 7 barrel lenses. Some will be for my 8x10 Chamonix and others for my huge lenses for the Camera Obscura I'm building. The box will have a front-mounted, integrated large Lee filter holder. For outdoors, I'll use ND filters and for inside I just need UV and color correction filters for use with lighting for Cibachrome tungsten continuous lighting and/strobe.
Meanwhile, for fast barrel lenses for the 8x10 camera, I'll research a more advanced air piston, since if Jim Galli can adjust his thumb pressure to choose 1/4 or an 1/8 of a second, then there could be a simple mechanical way of doing the same. In the meanwhile, I'll go with the best ND filters I can find.
There are sophisticated mechanical focal plane shutters available, but at over $6,000. An iris (multiple blade) electromechanical shutter 90 mm size is ~$2900 plus $700 for control electronics and the shutter oping time is 75 ms! So I see no other immediate mechanical solution.
For the visual Quality lens, however, it might be worth my while to buy a large aperture classic shutter, even if it cuts the aperture to 12 ~ f4.7 or so.
Asher
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