What to make of this Ebay Item

It looks to me like a home-made mf/lf camera with the Fed 3 at the front simply being used as a lens mount and shutter. It's certainly rather bizarre.
 
Oh my! if that's a 120, Polaroid or 4x5 -back, it would make a nice round image because the lens is probably too small to cover a big negative.

Maybe it's a MEGA macro bellow... :D
 
shadowfox said:
Oh my! if that's a 120, Polaroid or 4x5 -back, it would make a nice round image because the lens is probably too small to cover a big negative.
Click to expand...
The lens looks like an enlarging lens. Focusing appears to be done with the rails at the bottom. I'm not sure if they used the FED for anything more than a lens mount plus shutter.

Philipp
 
rxmd said:
The lens looks like an enlarging lens. Focusing appears to be done with the rails at the bottom. I'm not sure if they used the FED for anything more than a lens mount plus shutter.

Philipp
Click to expand...

Ah, I see, wouldn't it be cheaper or easier to find a real bellow mounted shutter/lens assembly...? :)

That's a *lot* of machine work just so you can put a Fed where it doesn't belong...
 
TVphotog said:
I just keep thinking... WHY??????
Click to expand...
Ah, the good old technician's categorial imperative. I am under the impression that this, on the other hand, is a case of tinkerer's categorial imperative ("WHY NOT???"). :)

Maybe they had the parts lying around from something else and just put the FED in front to use an enlarging lens with a shutter - saves you the hassle of getting lenses with built-in shutters.
 
Simple enuff. The lens does not appear to have a focussing scale and stops down to f45. Ergo, one can conclude it is a large format lens. The FED is merely serving as a shutter. I did a similar stunt mounting a Zorki-6 on a spare Graflex lensboard. The I-50 served for macro and a 150mm f4.5 M39 enlarging lens served as a normal.The other lens was a 10" f8 rapid rectilinear off a Thornton Pickard with an LTM converter. Thornton Pickards and the like used a curtain shutter behind the lens.

It is possible that this contraption is not as unusual as one might think. I have seen plenty of FSU large format cameras on eBay, none with a built-in shutter. I have seen plenty of FSU large format lenses, all sans shutter. I have never seen an FSU shutter.
This is the first FSU large format camera I have seen that is complete and ready to take pictures.
 
Hey, they did get one thing right - it is RARE. In fact, it's probably one of a kind. Since about 80% of the evil-bay ads for FSU cameras call them 'rare', sombody probably decided it was time to tell the truth. :D
 
My guess is that this was used by a street photographer before Polaroid film (you know the type that gave you the photo in a few moments), ergo the neck strap. This would use printing out paper instead of film. The maker has all the optics and focus tricked out and appears to use a roll film back (with no means to advance roll film so MF was not used) as a slide holder and mask to insert the paper "film".

Michael
 
The seller swore that it's MF film, but I'll get back to you on that, once i actually hold it in my hands...

Yea the super-optimist was a totally home-made camera. I really doubt it was even a prototype...
 
Great pics of the beast! Now post some pics if you ever get around to shooting with that monster. I am curious how it will work in a real world situation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom