65mm
90mm
On another topic, how does the Super Angulon f/8 feel when attached to the TravelWide? Does the camera feel really nose heavy? I see that the Super Angulon f/8 is almost three times the weight of the Angulon f/6.8. I am considering whether to go for the better lens but I wonder if that will take the fun out of shooting with the camera.
Thoughts?
PetaPixel has posted about the Travelwide.Originally Posted by Brian Puccio
Everyone doesn't drag around an incident light meter? What, just me?
My suspicion is that it will be nose heavy. That is not necessarily a bad thing--people walk around with gigantic heavy lenses on their small cameras all the time. But if you set the camera down, it might flop forward.
I will probably attach an Arca plate to the bottom of the camera, and am considering using a longer plate that will project out the front and provide a "foot" under the lens area. I may use stick-on felt feet at the back corners, to provide three feet including the front edge of the plate. Then it will be stable sitting down. I'll decide when I get it.
I would probably not consider buying a Super Angulon instead of an Angulon. The point of a Super Angulon is to have the image circle needed to provide movements. There are no movements on this camera, so that capability (and the expense it takes to acquire it) would be wasted. And the performance of the f/8 SA is probably no better at working apertures than for the Angulon, at least within the image circle that this camera will use. The f/4.5 SA would be a little better, perhaps, but it won't fit, and it really is insane overkill for this concept.
If I already had a 90/8 SA and not an Angulon, then I'd use it and not worry, of course. Part of the point of this project, it seems to me, is to get some old optics back into use, almost as an antidote to the gear-acquisition-syndrome that affects most amateur photographers these days. The 90/8's that are out there are probably sitting on a shelf, too. (For my view camera, I use the f/5.6 versions of the 90 and 65 Super Angulons, because there I want to support movements.)
The Angulon and the Optar both provide wide apertures for ease of focusing. In both cases, though, they perform best stopped down to f/16 or f/22. The Optar, maybe even more than the Angulon, is just made for this camera, being even smaller and lighter. It is also a four-element double-gauss design of some sort, and when I used it last (I think I can remember when that was) it was a pretty good performer at f/22. For work in daylight, f/22 is fine--even 160 film will allow a 1/50 shutter speed at f/22 in bright sun. With 400 film it will be even easier. The shutter action will be so quiet that hand-holding this at 1/25 should be fine, especially for prints up to 4x. A monopod opens up more possibilities, and this camera will be easy to brace against any available surface.
At 65mm, one needs the image circle of the Super Angulon design to cover the format, so that's the only real choice. But the 65/8 SA is much smaller and lighter than the 90/8 SA, and is routinely mounted in a #00 shutter.
The advantage to the format is that as long as we aren't trying to make huge prints, the small enlargement ratio will cover a multitude of sins.
Rick "eager" Denney
I think I still have an ancient Sekonic selenium reflected meter in the pile somewhere. If it works, it's small enough to attach to the side of this camera with a bit of Velcro, for those cases when Sunny 16 isn't good enough. And because it uses a selenium cell, there are no batteries.
Rick "seeking battery-free operation" Denney
Larry,Interesting information about the Angulon lens! Are you offering to CLA Angulons? ;-) So, with all this effort to bring the extra spring into play, is there only a gain of a 1/50th as someone else speculated? Did you test the lens with a shutter speed tester? I see someone wrote an audio shutter speed tester for the iPhone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOcGn07YUpc Seems easy enough to do with any sound recording program.
No, I don't want to CLA any shutters belonging to anyone else! I don't want to risk damaging anything that isn't mine.
To test speed, I made one of these shutter testers: http://www.davidrichert.com/sound_ca...ter_tester.htm
After my cleaning, lubrication, and adjustment, all the speeds seemed within tolerances, including the highest speed. But it is a bit hard to tell for sure at the highest speeds. The little blip that you generate is less clearly defined. It is hard to know exactly what to measure. I'll have to stick the shutter on my tester again and see for sure how it behaves. If I remember right, the 1/400 setting produced a blip about half the size of the 1/200 setting. But I need to confirm that.
There are also several different smartphone apps that use the camera on your phone as a light meter.
Zak Baker
zakbaker.photo
"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter."
Ansel Adams
Rick,
Thanks for posting this analysis. I think you're right, I'm going to stick with the f/6.8. I could use a 90mm for my Wisner but I want to be able to do movements so I will buy a more expensive lens at some point. I got a cheap set of bellows for the Wisner but that camera was never really designed to shoot wide, it has 23" of bellows draw, after all, and the standards don't easily come close together. I've already spent enough money on long lenses and need to shoot them.
I'm with you on "battery-free operation". You would be surprised at the reactions I get from people when I tell them my Wisner, Rolleiflex, or Bessa does not have a battery. Most people have no clue.
Anyone who can be persuaded to buy one and help the campaign reach $75K.
It definitely is nose-heavy... The camera feels more balanced with the 6.8. It's a bit hard to describe the difference. I don't think the SA is overly objectionable on the Travelwide, but I would probably use some kind of wrist or neck strap with it. Definitely still a fun setup!
Regarding metering and Sunny 16... All the Brazil stuff was shot on a combination of Portra 160 and Fuji 160S, and only a couple shots were explicitly metered. The nice thing about negative film is that you can split the exposure without losing half the image to pure black or white.
This shot is probably the best example from the samples of that flexibility:
I wish I had a digital version of that, but you get the point—Susan is almost completely backlit by low, powerful sun, yet we can read into the shadows and the highlights on the waves. So you don't need to sweat the exposure as much as slide film or digital. If I recall, I started at Sunny 16, then opened up a couple stops for the shadows in that shot.
Is the 90mm f/6.3 Congo still being manufactured? That's another small, lightweight option along the lines of the Angulon/Optar.
Did Meopta ever make a 90mm Largor? I've heard of a 120mm, but am otherwise unfamiliar with Meopta. If a 90mm exists it might be another nice option for folks in Europe.
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