The poor man's View Camera .

[pniaouris]

   I started , on May of 2010 to make my own tilt/shift device . After the first attempt what was a hobby became an impegnative project , and after four prototypes , I reached the final one .
  It uses Medium Format lenses , but can mount 35mm ones under certain circumstances , I use it with 35mm film or APS-C digital cam , can shift 15mm all directions for each standart , and tilt limited only by the lens covering capacity . Weight 1,7 kgs . Not bad I think .
  For the whole project this  flickr set of mine provides all the info about it .
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pavlosfotosathgr/sets/72157624108080127/

[wolfnowl]

Congrats!  I trust it was worth the effort for you...

Mike.

[Joe S]

Nice project!

[snoleoprd]

Very nice, well done.

Alan

[Tony Jay]

Impressive!
Congratulations.

Regards

Tony Jay

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Excellent work! Thanks for sharing!

[Fritzer]

Brilliant , I love well done DIY !

[Rob C]

Brilliant , I love well done DIY !

I also liked lenses with real depth of field scales! Remember them, Mr Nikon? Having said that, Nikon's old colour system also sucked: they should have used proper numbers.

Nice work indeed, and well worth the effort, I'd think!

Rob C

[pniaouris]

  Thanks for the comments guys .
Here are a couple of test fotos . One with controls at 0 point , and the same with lens tilted 15 degrees to the right . The lens is a Mir 26  3,5/45 at f/16 in both cases .
   I hope I'll be soon able to produce a limited series of the system , rated at about 400 euro for the full version .

[pniaouris]

  These are some older fotos made with previous prototypes

[pniaouris]

  This is a Mir 1B (with mount and focusing helicoid removed) , mounted on the 'Geometry' , and focused to infinity .
There's obviously no space between camera and lens for mounts to hold the bellows , so the only solution I've thought of , is to use a black foam rubber  ring , 25mm thick as a bellows , with no mounting . I'll post fotos as soon as I'll have made it .
  Also , Monday 17 , I'm going to visit an ancient theater and I hope I'll have more than one opportunity to show what this baby is capable of .

[FredBGG]

Here is my project

I just bought a Canon 85mm 1.2 that was broken for pennies and tore it apart and built it into the front end of a Fuji gx680 that I will be using on my d800
so I can tilt shift. For focus control really, no perspective control due to the limits of the image circle.



Early "design stages"

What is cool is that the front end of the Fuji gx680 is really easy to remove.

Just these two screws here.



The base to mount the Nikon is easy too. you just need one of these and a block of billet aluminum.



Then you need to modify one of these wide angle bellows by Fuji for the Fuji gx680.

[pniaouris]

  Hi FredBGG ,
  Congrats , fine work . For tilt/shift movements you  just have to put a medium format lens on . Russians are economic enough , but you can also use a lens from a broken folding camera or an enlargement lens for 6X6 to 6X9 .
   Good shots .

[FredBGG]

The Fuji gx680 lenses work on the rig for shift as well as tilt shift.

You have to use them manual stop down and the widest is a 50mm.

With the 85mm 1.2 canon you can use tilt shift, but you always have to shift after tilting in order to center the image circle.

Dreamy images.

IF you are interested in the front end of a Fuji gx680 there is a guy on ebay .. astrosmith .. who on and off has broken gx680 bodies for very cheap.

[pniaouris]

  Thank you for the info FredBGG

[pniaouris]

    Here are some fotos shot with 'Geometry' . Lens is the Mir 1B  at f/8 , tilted just a bit to help for the DoF . Pentax K10d used as a back .

[pniaouris]

   Here's a fresh one . I shot it yesterday with the use of "Geometry" . The lens is a Vega 12 2,8/90 ,tilted and stopped down to f/16 . If you look carefully you'll observe that focus is not on points of the same distance from the lens but on points belonging to a plane that is obligue to the lens axis (roughly the plane of the table) .

[Deardorff]

It's obvious you enjoy the playing around and making things.
As for a View Camera, it would have been less expensive to buy an old Calument 400 series with a lens, 6 film holders and a meter. Then you could shoot 4x5 film.

[pniaouris]

   A Large Format Camera was a dream for me when I was younger . What stopped me from buying one was the cost but also the sheet film processing . This , and the weight was too much for me . Imagine now . Anyway , making a functional and good looking machine ,which mounts lenses I already had , and my dSLR  , and gives such results , was a challenge I couldn't resist . As about the cost , making a couple of copies for some friends of mine at a very reasonable price , will give me back a big part of the money I spent for the development of this machine . Anyway I like both milling the parts and assembling work . And last but not least , realising this project was a great experience , and I feel my shots with this machine are literally hand made .

[pniaouris]

  Here are some fotos I shot the last few days . They are all shot with "Geometry" , a Pentax K10d and the Mir 28B 3,5/45 at f/16 . The back standard is tilted 10 degrees back as a starting point ,then the front is tilted forth by controlling the focusing .