On Photography 2

Morin 6x9 Super Wide Camera

This was put together for about $750.00 worth of parts and maybe 20 hrs of work over a number of evenings in 2006. Not nearly as beautiful as the Alpa 6x9SW for sure. As a prototype it is reasonable. Currently it has the perspective of a 24 mm lens on a 35 mm camera. I used a new 58 mm Fotoman Focus mount, old 58 mm Rodenstock Grandagon f 5.6 wide angle lens, a new Voightlander 28mm view finder, old Graphlex 6x9 roll film back, old folder camera Zeiss Ideal, for a body, old Speed graphic lens board and front mount, a bellows from the Zeiss - fairly simple and you can change lenses easily. This was a good learning experience and I enjoy using it. As a tool it works ideally for certain types of shots I want - and it is very light - 85% of the weight is the lens. The format is a 6cm x 9cm on 120 film - 125 mega pixel or greater - essentially.

I came across a spare Graphlex graphlock back for a super Mamiya 2x3 and in May of 2010 decided it was time to do some major alterations as the camera has proven itself to be very useful. I cut a new back plate mount and front standard mount, did away with the bellows and refined a few functions. This time the effort required exceeded the original building

as I had far more surfaces to align and machine to square and level, and it was all done by hand on my kitchen table.

It finally works as I had wanted it to - the back is removable, The Mamiya back is now modified to take Horseman roll film backs and I can use a ground glass - it is very solid and can be hand held down to a 15th of a second. I did away with the option of shift - opting for a permanent higher mount of the lens, as that has proven most useful for the type of shooting I do with it. Here are a few images of the rehab process. It remains pure function over form.

As with anything of this nature it required multiple trials and errors of fitting and take it apart again, no again, to get it right and required shooting film to find the very last light leaks and resolve final focus mounting. The difference between sort of sharp and very sharp, accurate focus is less than the thickness of a piece of Film. Often the older camera’s had very fine thin paper rings under the lens - sometimes four or five - to get the exact mounting - as each body was slightly different. After shooting a dozen rolls through it - and multiple refinements, it is finally exact.

The Grandagon is a rather impressive lens and offers a perspective and atmosphere that digital can’t appear to do quite yet because of the difficulty in focusing oblique rays of light on a sensor surface. I certainly wouldn’t use it as my only camera but there are plenty of situations where the extra length and angle of view allows landscape lines to flow into a set of shapes that are far more pleasing to the eye; while remaining in the realm of visually acceptable as a single image, where as a Panorama is far more than we can look at or grasp at once. This view below wouldn’t work well as with less angle of view as an example.