sinar db lens

[pierre salomon]

Hello everyone,

Pease help me before I made a costly mistake. I just bought a used F1. Love it so far. Is it, however, possible to use a sinar db mounted lens on the F1? Loking at the picture, the lens does'nt seem to have a copal or compur type of shutter. Sorry for asking but I am a newcomer in the sinar world.

Merci

[Ernest Purdum]

DB lenses are without shutter. The board fits onto a Sinar behind the lens shutter. These are great shutters, but expensive. On tne other hand, you only have to buy one for most, maybe all, of your lenses.



Occasionally, the price of a lens on a DB board will be low enough to justify having it remounted into a between lens shutter.

[Robert Lawrence - Fivebyfour Commercial Photography, UK]

Almost. The db lensboard with lens fits to the front of the front standard. The behind the lens shutter fits into the rear of the front standard and the bellows connects on to the rear of the shutter. There is an (optional) connecting cable that goes from the shutter to the film back which closes the shutter when you put a filmholder in. The board does *not* fit onto the shutter. Apologies for being pedantic but it could make a difference.

[Capocheny]

Pierre,

Ernest is correct in that you need a Sinar Autoshutter before using the DB-mounted lenses. The Autoshutter is a nice item to have if you need consistent "speeds" for your lenses... ie, an F45@1/125th of a second is exactly that for ALL of your lenses since the apperture and speeds are controlled by the Autoshutter. The other advantage to the shutter is that it allows you to work from behind the camera...you don't need to walk around to look at the shutter speeds when setting it....nor the apperture for that matter. They're visible from behind the camera.

Having said that though... I've had 2 of these Autoshutters (one was brand new) and they've both had problems with "stopping down" to preview the depth-of-field. My new one is back at Sinar right now for just this problem. This is the problem with having this arrangement...if all of your lenses are DB-mounted and your shutter is out of commission...then you effectively lose the useage of your lenses too (unless you have separate shutters for each lens you intend to use.)

IMHO, if you keep your shutter mounted lenses CLA'd all the time...the inconsistensies between lenses shouldn't be that radically different. As for the inconvenience of having to walk around to the front of the camera to adjust the apperture...small disadvantage! (Especially when you can take the picture versus not being able to do so!)

The Autoshutters can be had on "that auction site" for around US$350 and up. I paid $475 for a brand spanking new one with cables and all! The MSLP on it is in the US$2700 range.

Hope that helps.

[Martin Patek-Strutsky]

What is about the much-discussed vibrations of the DB-shutter? Has it been overrated in the past?

[otzi]

If it is of any consequence the DB shutter is good to 8 seconds. Fits in nicely some where between the shutter and the hat saving the thumbs or pebbles or what ever your chosen timing technique may be.