Having fun its what its about.

Good luck, keep on having fun,

Dan

Having fun its what its about.

Good luck, keep on having fun,

Dan

I made another attempt at making an adapter, had some thick plastic part from another item which wasn't needed and it had an opening 1/8" larger than the view-able area. I cut it with the table saw to fit the opening perfectly, made spots in the back so the sliders of the graflok would hold it firmly into the camera then started working on some rails. when I drilled into the part, I slipped and the drill shifted angles and the shift broke the plastic.

so about 1hr wasted fabricating...

I want something out of metal so I ordered a film pack.

I received the film pack and it attaches fine with the sliding rails. So far I've given it some love with a grinder and 36 grit flap disk taking the back side off. After the grinding and extensive cleaning to get rid of any dust I test fit it and it seems to stay on fine.

I have some stainless steel rails which have a spring on 1/2 the back to make the mounting point for the sliding camera portion and I have some metal stock to make the sliding portion with but I am not that good of a metal worker so I'm trying to figure out how to cut accurately.

Stainless is tough to cut with any kind of shear including "tin snips". The shearing action is perfect until almost finished and then the very thin remaining stainless wants to stretch instead of cut resulting in a warped & crooked cut that is very hard on most shears.

While not perfect a small thin reinforced cut off wheel in a Dremel or bench grinder would be my choice. Also a NEW bi-metal hacksaw blade will work good if you can clamp the metal solid. Use a square and draw a line where the cut needs to be and take your time with either method. Clean up the cut with a file.

Holes drill much harder in stainless than steel and you should always use a brand new drill bit and the more expensive the better. Use very light pressure as the drill "goes though" because again the metal wants to stretch instead of cut and the drill will catch and possibly break. Use a much larger bit with light pressure to chamfer and clean the burr off of both sides. Hope this helps.

The stainless rails are about 1/2" wide and pretty thin, I should have no problem cutting them to length.

as for the sliding panel with the hole for using a extension tube to attach to my camera, I was thinking of clamping 2 boards tightly together on either side of the metal piece I want to cut (not SS) then using a grinder and cutting right up to the boards.

I will take your advice and get a new hole saw for cutting the circular hole in the center

in the grand scheme of things, I'm messing around having fun, if I wanted something workable with less effort, I'd be better off with a 4x5 and something like this https://www.ebay.com/itm/Moveable-Camera-Adapter-For-Sony-Nex-To-Linhof-Sinar-Toyo-Wista-Horseman-4x5/132528129061?hash=item1edb4ac425:g:yv4AAOxy3NBSeLcB

I like the 2x3 graflex and shot 2 more rolls of film over my vacation last week. Maybe my film shooting/developing skills get better, I know for certain I took one shot and advanced the roll with the dark slide in.

I recommend a good light meter or a film camera with built in metering (and make sure either of those is calibrated). I find film camera's tend to meter for film better than DSLR's (maybe it's just my luck). I have had very good success that way, I find my DSLR's are anywhere from 2/3 of a stop to 2 full stop's off from what is a "correct" exposure (neutral gray rendered faithfully).

Shooting B&W remember you have tremendous latitude with printing them (or having them printed). 2 stops at a minimum. If you really want to nail down your metering keep a log so you can see if there's a trend (ie on sunny days your DSLR is 1 stop to bright, on overcast days it's 1/3 stop dark, etc). That can let you dial in fairly quickly if you record both what you actually took the picture with on the camera and what your DSLR metered at.

If you want to be a little more methodical, shoot a neutral gray card in 1/2 stops from 1 stop under what's metered, through 1 stop over (so 5 photos total), and do so under a few different light conditions (I prefer sunny, cloudy, incandescent, and fluorescent (if that's something you shoot under often)). Figure out which negative gives you the best rendering of the gray card, and you now have an adjustment factor for whatever you used for metering (your DSLR, and hand held meter, etc). Takes about 2 rolls to do it right. Doing it with cut film is a bit more of a pain, but it was something I was glad I did to start out since it saved me a lot of trouble later on.

My father in law gave me a sekonic L508 light meter and I've been learning how to use it by metering then shooting with my digital camera.

The thing I am somewhat struggling with is that the sekonic will show you shutter speed + aperture + a smaller number near the aperture. If I rotate the dial there always seems to be multiple combinations of shutter speed for a given aperture and it seems the lower number ones are always overexposed on my Sony A7II.

I'm renovating a boat and trying to get all the work done before it gets too cold to work with resins so I haven't done much with the graflex to sony adapter. We have a trip scheduled to go to Acadia National Park 2 weekends out and it is going to rain all weekend (no grinding fiberglass!!!!) so I'm going to try to get it done this weekend and get it ready for the trip.

I picked up a 4x5 Graflex with roll film back for short $ at a yard sale, I plan on shooting some film with that on the trip as well.