What I don't know is about the lens boards, and really haven't found a picture
of one. Some are quite simple, but others can be quite complex. If its just
cutting the right size piece of metal and putting the right size hole in the
center, that I can handle. If there are threads involved, it has light traps
and other things as a part of the lens board, that could get much tougher.
Any help would be appreciated.
My first 4x5 was a Linhof III. I was a student at the time, so I lacked both
money and workshop equipment. I made lens boards from a piece of aluminum that
was about the same thickness as one of the official boards. I don’t know what
thicknesses sheet aluminum comes in, but it was “off the shelf” and on the fat
side of 1/16”. I got the sheet aluminum at a scrape metal dealer. I just put an
official lens board next to pieces of aluminum and felt them between thumb and
forefingers until they were about the same.
I traced an official board, including the centre hole, on the “new" aluminum. I
then rough cut it with a hacksaw and smoothed it to exact shape with a file.
The lens boards for the Linhoff III are 100m tall and 93+mm wide, with a tiny
notch centred on the base, and a wider notch or angled groove somewhere around
the hole to accommodate the screw that is usually on the back of the shutter to
keep it from turning in the lens board. I usually centre punched the hole by
eye, and roughed it out with a hole saw on an electric drill. This was a
*really cheap* hole saw. I chose a size smaller than the shutter required, and
then slowly enlarged it with a half-round file. Since I had traced the hole on
the aluminum, I could slowly enlarge the hole in a way that remained centred on
the board. (I don’t know others’ filing technique, but I found that firmly
running the half-round file around the hole, rather than back and forth through
the hole, gave the smoothest results and allowed me to get it well-centred.)
Finally I smoothed everything with fine sandpaper, and painted it flat black.
The official lens boards have a slight indentation where the camera has a
raised fuzzy edge. I never had a problem with perfectly flat-backed lens
boards. At a later stage, when I acquired a Linhof IV and then Master, I
started contact cementing a layer of coarse-threaded black fabric to the back
of the lens boards. (Cement the lens board to a piece of the cloth, and when it
is dry, cut it out with a sharp knife.) The later official Linhof boards have
fancy raised light traps, but cloth-backed flat boards work just fine for me.
(It wouldn’t be hard to make wooden “rings” to epoxy on the lens board backs if
you really wanted baffles.)
If you don’t have a lens board to copy, you can make a mockup with 4-ply
mounting board. Get the 100mmX93mm size, notch the bottom, but it on the camera
and from the inside of the camera draw around the hole with a pencil. That
should be close enough to make the real thing.
In short, Linhof lens board as easy to make.
The Linhof III has two drawbacks:
1) It used tiny notches permanently filed into the track rather than flip-up,
adjustable “infinity” stops. (This is annoying only if you want to use the
rangefinder with focal lengths that did not come with the original lens set.)
2) There is no forward tilt with the front standard. The easiest solution for
tilting the lens down is to mount the camera on its side and use front “swing”.
That requires a strong tripod head or an L-bracket for the camera.
On the positive side, the latest Model III’s (from 1955-56, I think), were the
high point of construction and finish. They also used leather covering rather
than the vinyl of later models. The Technikas kept evolving, so each
subsequent model had clear advantages, but “fit and finish” did not improve
after the mid-50’s, and may have declined somewhat.
Myron
