I just purchased an older Calumet architectural 4x5 view camera. I need lenses for it and was planning to get a 90 Super Angulon. I would like to know how long a lens I can use with this recessed lensboard model as I would also like to get one of at least 150 mm.

-- Terry Neumann (terry@ilhawaii.net), September 17, 1999

Answers

If I understand your message correctly, using a 150 mm lens with a recessed lens board should not present any serious problems, but there might be concerns for longer lenses

What the recessed lens board will do for a wide angle is allow you to have the front standard farther away from the film. This means that the bellows will have more flexibility without binding if you focus on something close to the camera and then want to use some camera movements. For a 90 mm lens you probably don't even need one since 90 mm is probably enough distance that your bellows would be fine, but for something like a 65 mm lens the recessed LB would be highly useful.

With a long lens like a 300 a recessed lens board will artificially shorten your bellows. A 300 mm lens requires 300 mm of bellows extension to focus at infinity, and even more bellows extension to focus closer. If for argument sake your bellows was 300 mm long, but you used a recessed lens board of 20 mm then your bellows would be 280 mm and not long enough. In practical terms (because I'm sure your bellows is longer than 300 mm) you will be able to use a 300 mm lens, but just wouldn't be able to focus as closely as you could with a flat lens board.

To finish up: I'd spend the extra money and buy a lensboard for each lens I own. They're cheap and will give allow you have a recessed board on a lens that needs it, while having a flat board for the longer lenses that don't. And you won't have to take each lens apart everytime you want to change lenses

-- David Grandy (dgarndy@accesscable.net), September 18, 1999.

Terry, Your camera is the wide angle verson of the Calumet, correct? If so, it has a 12 inch rail. 12 inches equals about 300mm. A 150 lens could be easily focused to make a life size image on the film, at the full extension, with a flat lensboard. You could use 210mm lens, 8 1/4 inches, to do everyingthing but extreme close-ups.

-- Bill Moore (wmoore@provide.net), September 20, 1999.