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Part III : Tests and first steps |
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Sunday, 08 August 2004 |
 More one month has passed since my last entry in this section, and not much progress
has happened unfortunetely, since my process camera connection didn't work out and i'm now
faced with building evrything from scratch.
On the other hand, I've made two purchases that are important for the rest
of the project : a lens and a tripod, so this part will take the form of a litte equipment review of sorts...
(I also got my hand on one amazing loupe, i'll talk about it elsewhere on the site...)
Let's start with the tripod, I wanted the most solid piece of hardware I could
afford so my ULF ambitions could run
free without being limited by the weight limitations of a tripod. I started
looking around a good while ago, and had decided on a wooden tripod after
seeing a beautiful Berlebach tripod at a local photography equipement store.
I looked around in the large format photography forums and found good support
for the legendary Ries tripods, but not much on the german-made Berlebach.
I decided on the UNI-14 heavy tripod, it's a single extension tripod which
means that it isn't very high at full extension, at 136 cm (53 inches). It's
relatively light , at 12.5 pounds for a tripod of that size (keep in mind
that a metal tripod of that capacity would wight at least 25 pounds...), since
it is supposed to support a weight of up to 120 pounds ! On opening the box,
i realised that this was a beautifully made, very solid piece of equipment
that i'm going to have to lug aroung for many years to come, it's going to
last ! It has an integrated level on the huge platform (6-inch diameter) and
a spring-loaded screw, this allows for very solid mounting of a camera or
a tripod head. 
The tripod doesn't come with a head, so i started looking at various heads at various costs, weights, and support capacities.
I don't like ball heads that much, so i looked for a pan-tilt head, and settled on the 160 Heavy-duty large format pan-tilt head
from Manfrotto. It has a quoted support capacity of around 25 pounds, which is enough for now, but if i go further down the ULF road,
I will have to get something more substantial or forego the head altogether and put the camera's bed or rail directly on the large
platform of the tripod. The head is rather heavy but feels very solid. It has two bubble levels on the quick-release mounting
platform, and allows for very solid mounting of heavy equipment. The heaviest piece of optical equipment I now own is a 12 pound
Meade ETX telescope that i mounted at a 45 degree angle on the head, and with all the tripod and head adjustments well tightened,
I simply tried to change the telescope's position, and it never budged...
On the budget side, this combination is not cheap (Tripod and head came at
around 500$ Can) but it's both beautiful and solid, and i'll never have to
buy another tripod again in the next few decades, and on the plus side it's
going to give me a good workout on photo outings...
And now for the lens...
I wanted a relatively cheap lens, but a good quality one to be able to produce the best possible images in a ULF camera. I had
set my sight on process camera lenses, since the longer lenses that are needed to cover ULF can be picked up relatively cheaply
on e-bay. The only trick is that they are usually optimized for close focus (usually in the 10:1 to 1:10 range...) and that they don't come
with shutter and are usually rather difficult to adapt to standard shutters. The close focus optimization is not a big problem for me since
I plan on doing mostly portraiture and that at a 10:1 ratio on a 11x14 inches it gives a subject area of 110x140 inches which is more than
enough to fit an entire human being, and even more than that if need be...
I combed though hundreds of e-bay items, and found some interesting pieces,
but never at the right price. On a trip to the local photo equipment shop
i spotted a lens that was hidden in the bottom corner of the medium format
used equipment showcase. It turned out to be a nice Rodenstock Apo-Gerogon
300mm f9 graphic arts lens. I knew the Apo-Gerogon had good coverage, but
i never found the actual figures on the net, so I picked it up for a good
price (and a refund possibility !) and took it home for a few tests.
Since my camera was not yet built, i had to get some testing device built (note the 52 cent camera on
the 500 $ tripod... ) so i could determine the image circle of the camera. I took a carboard box that had a depth of around 300 mm so the
lens would be focused at infinity, cut out a hole for the lens on one side and opened completely the opposite side, giving a hole of 11x20 inches.
I covered the hole with wax paper, opened the diaphragm to the maximum apperture, put a towel over the whole thing as a darkcloth, and enjoyed the view...
The whole area seemed covered, and the way i had mounted the lens put the focus at around 20 feet in front of the camera. A 11x20 coverage is very good for
a 300 mm lens so i had to be sure. I cut a second hole in the front of the box, mounted the lens on it, and covered the first hole
(in effect shifting the lens to the right by a good 6-7 inches so i would be sure of hitting the side of the image circle...). It gave an image circle of
20 inches (an amazing 80 degrees !), enough for 11x14 or 7x17 but missing the corners of larger formats.
In light of those very good results i decided to keep the lens, and it is
now the deciding factor in my camera size choice : it only covers 11x14 or
7x17, so it rather limits my options. The 11x14 format has always had an appeal
for me from the day i discovered the useless fact about fitting a whole human
head at 1:1 on it, and that's what i had in mind when i started thinking about
ULF anyway. The next entries will be about the progress made in the various
parts of the building project : bellows, back, holders (could i be able to
get my hand on a couple of "real" film holders ?), focusing, movements, transport,
and if all goes well i should be able to expose my first sheets of film before
next summer...
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Last Updated ( Monday, 07 November 2005 )
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