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[R_J]

Hi there,

I've been trying to trace the pages which detailed the removal of the front bed of the Century Graphic. At first I thought it was on the South Bristol View site, however can't locate anything of that order.

A few of the threads detail the problems of putting the front bed of the Century camera back; however the project Century I've been toying with (no rangefinder) uses almost exclusively ultra-wide angle lenses down up to 65mm.

Does anyone have the step instructions for dealing with the bed removal without the front spring tensioning causing 25lbs of pressure damage?

I wonder if anyone has done this, and retained the front rail, or detached it at the hinge for a lighter compact Century..?

Kind regards,

RJ

[Dan Fromm]

RJ, not to quarrel with you, but I use lenses as short as 38 mm on my Century and have never felt the need to remove the door.

There's a practical problem, anyway. If you remove the door you'll lose the focusing knobs and their connection with the inner bed rails where the front standard will have to be. How will you focus then?

Cheers,

Dan

[R_J]

Hi Dan,

The focussing isn't a problem ~ with the locks to set the front standard, it will become zone focus on a wide-angle only bed which can be focussed on the ground glass too using the middle lever lock.

The front bed adds significant weight to the body with the dropped bed ~ I've been thinking for some time that it'd be better with a smaller more portable frame. The trade off of losing the longer focal lengths isn't so severe, since these lenses can be adapted to a heavier 1/4 plate SLR type view camera (this Century has no rangefinder).

Kind regards,

RJ

[R_J]

Just finished the third reworking of this:

[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3189/3096218685_e0baa7fc98.jpg?v=0[/img]

Looks like the front standard will stay...