What lenses fit into a crown graphic?

[tetrisattack]

Full story, including superfluous details:

Well, it turns out the shutter in my crown graphic is fatigued. I drove way the heck up the bay in the twilight (first day of spring: what a great day for motorcycles!) and went to a repairman's house, who put it on a stroboscope and said, "all your film's coming out overexposed by a stop and a half because the metal's old and the shutter spring is losing its springyness. It can be corrected to maybe half-stop accuracy, but it'll never be perfect..." and it'll cost about the same as a lens from another old crown graflex.

And: after a conversation with one of my photo teachers from last quarter, I've sort of decided that the direction I want to take in photography is toward large format, more deliberate camera work. So, it's important that I have a working, accurate 4x5, and that means that I need a good lens.

Now I'm trying to figure out what I should do. I really, really want to keep the crown graphic. I like field cameras, don't work in the studio often, and I think monorails are huge, bulky, and the Calumet model they have for checkout at school is awful and flimsy (heard a comment once: Calumets practically need to be clamped down with vice grips, that's so true). At the same time, I'm suspicious that my graflex has a proprietary or nonstandard mount or something.

So what I need to know is:

1. I have the original lensboard that came with my camera. What kind of "mount" is this? KEH describes lenses as being a "35 MOUNT." There's also a dimple at 8:30 or so, to ensure the lens is oriented properly.

2. If my lensboard is incompatible, is it possible to just buy a different lensboard? The graflex's is just held onto the front with sliding clamps, but it's got rounded corners, so it could be that it can only take graflex-designed lensboards.

3. If it turns out that I can just put a new lens in the original lensboard, should I be worried about clearance inside the camera body when folded?

Thanks for any tips or suggestions, I want to approach this as well-informed as possible and possibly buy whatever I need in the next two weeks, before next quarter begins. 🙂

 

[plexi]

Full story, including superfluous details:

Well, it turns out the shutter in my crown graphic is fatigued. I drove way the heck up the bay in the twilight (first day of spring: what a great day for motorcycles!) and went to a repairman's house, who put it on a stroboscope and said, "all your film's coming out overexposed by a stop and a half because the metal's old and the shutter spring is losing its springyness. It can be corrected to maybe half-stop accuracy, but it'll never be perfect..." and it'll cost about the same as a lens from another old crown graflex.

And: after a conversation with one of my photo teachers from last quarter, I've sort of decided that the direction I want to take in photography is toward large format, more deliberate camera work. So, it's important that I have a working, accurate 4x5, and that means that I need a good lens.

Now I'm trying to figure out what I should do. I really, really want to keep the crown graphic. I like field cameras, don't work in the studio often, and I think monorails are huge, bulky, and the Calumet model they have for checkout at school is awful and flimsy (heard a comment once: Calumets practically need to be clamped down with vice grips, that's so true). At the same time, I'm suspicious that my graflex has a proprietary or nonstandard mount or something.

So what I need to know is:

1. I have the original lensboard that came with my camera. What kind of "mount" is this? KEH describes lenses as being a "35 MOUNT." There's also a dimple at 8:30 or so, to ensure the lens is oriented properly.

2. If my lensboard is incompatible, is it possible to just buy a different lensboard? The graflex's is just held onto the front with sliding clamps, but it's got rounded corners, so it could be that it can only take graflex-designed lensboards.

3. If it turns out that I can just put a new lens in the original lensboard, should I be worried about clearance inside the camera body when folded?

Thanks for any tips or suggestions, I want to approach this as well-informed as possible and possibly buy whatever I need in the next two weeks, before next quarter begins. 🙂

1. Measure the holde diameter in your lensboard. The standard sizes are Copal 0: 34.6mm, Copal 1: 41.6, Copal 3: 65mm


2. You can buy lensboars from www.skgrimes.com

3. Depends on what focal lengt you want. I use a Fujinon 150mm in my Crown, and no problem with folding the camera with the lens mounted. The Fujinon has a pretty standard size, so most 150mm lenses will fit.

 

[Wayne R. Scott]

What shutter is your current lens in? Is it a supermatic or a graphex? Is your lens a 127mm or 135mm?

Carol Flutot can do a CLA on your shutter for $45. Often times the top two fastest shutter speeds will read nearly the same even after a CLA. She has brought back to life many shutters that were pronounced DOA by local repairman.

http://www.flutotscamerarepair.com/


Wayne

 

[smiling gecko]

hi conor,

sounds like you have already recieved some good info...here's a good site for "everything graflex" with lots and lots of good info and other large format links to boot. the link is : www.graflex.org

i just got a crown graphic a few months ago after not doing any large format for many, many years and am really liking my contact prints - will be looking for a 4x5 enlarger soon...enjoy!!

kenneth
__________________________________
"...patience and shuffle the cards." miguel cervantes

 

[tetrisattack]

Okay, so, thanks for the replies! This thread is, of course, very off-topic, so I appreciate your collective knowledge. Here's where I'm at now:

I measured the hole today. It seems to be just shy of 35mm. Also, I checked out a camera from my school, and I've found that I can mount its 150mm "Caltar" lens, which is in a copal #0 shutter -- but it can't be held perfectly flat against the graflex's lensboard, due to the knobby protrusion. I figure, I'm brave, that's nothing I can't solve with a drill if I want to go there. And, the graflex folds up just fine with that somewhat larger lens mounted, with enough bellows to get fairly close and no problems focussing to infinity. But I don't want that lens, it's the school's, I can only check it out for a couple days at a time, so I want my own.

Cruising KEH, I see a lot of 135-150's, and I guess at this point I could use some advice about the characteristics of certain brands, or if there are any really bad lenses to avoid. My price range is ideally around the $350 mark or less, which includes a number of Fujinon-W's, Nikkor-W's, some weirder more obscure stuff that I don't recognize, and a delicious looking Schneider Symmar, if I want to eat ramen for a month and stretch my little student budget to ~$450.

As a rangefinder user, I've got a healthy appreciation for good bokeh and resolution, but not many worries about contrast or even a little flare now and then. But I do want to shoot in color next year (I'm swinging a deal with the school for free sheet film processing, C-41 and E-6!), for whatever that's worth. Considering these things, what lenses might I be happy with? I have to say, I am pleasantly surprised with the performance of my Optar, when it works, which is not often.

 

[sf]

All I know is that I had a copal 0 lens, and it mounted funny - or poorly.


You can find a good number of used lens boards of various sizes on the auction site.

If you choose a lens that is flat like the original - not a big thing like my Fujinon Super Wide Delux was, you'll have no trouble closing the tray. I had a very nice little Caltar II E 150mm on my Crown Graphic, and things were perfectly swell. And you don't need the lens to perfectly fit the board - you can just find a lens and board that work well enough. There might be a little extra room around the lens in the mount. I had that problem with the Caltar, but it was never an issue.

 

[wyk_penguin]

Basically, a lensboard is just a board with a hole in the middle and flocking on one side. I have seen guys using DIY lensboards. So don't worry about the board. Instead worry about the lens. If you find one with a copal 1 that is nice, go for it. I am not advocating the use of a copal 3, because you may interfere with the tilt and shift functions simply because the lens is too large and hits the bellows.

P.S. What you need most may not be a drill but a lens wrench. Nothing make you more embarassed than having to tighten the lens with you hand in the field (getting out the lens wrech in the field looks bad enough).

 

[r-brian]

Contact Jim at Midwest Photo Exchange if you're turely interested in buying a lens. The web site is http://www.mpex.com/.

Jim is very knowledgable and friendly. He will take the time to talk to you. I think Midwest bought all the old Graphlex stock. They'll have a lens board for you if you need a replacement one, much cheaper than SKGrimes.

Good luck with your journey into large format. I started out with a press camera, Busch, and it worked out fine. The photo's of the mountain top cabin in my Gallery are from the Busch.

Brian

 

[rtphotos]

tetrisattack,

I know where you are coming from. A couple years back, I bought a crown graphic on ebay for a large-format photo class. The shutter bonked out on me shortly after purchase. Since I needed dependability immediately, I decided to buy another lens w/shutter.

I contacted Midwest Photo Exchange (also mentioned by others in this thread) and bought a lens from them. They happened to have a near mint 135mm Sinaron in a copal 0 shutter and installed it on a new graphic lens board for less than $300. A very sharp modern-day lens - no problems, fits inside the folded graphic fine.

The original Kodak Ektar 152mm had nice bokeh/creaminess in the prints, so I hope to get the supermatic shutter fixed when finances permit. It definitely has a different look/signature compared to the very sharp Sinaron, and not in a negative way, if you know what I mean.

The people at Midwest are great and very helpful. So too are the knowlegeable people at www.graflex.org.

good luck! rtphoto

 

[rtphotos]

Oh, I should mention that my experience with the 135mm Sinaron and 152mm Kodak is with black and white. I haven't used color film with the crown graphic (yet). 🙂

rtphotos