Welcome to Xenotar club

One goes to NY, one goes to Texas, one goes to Germany. 6 of Xenotar lenses this batch, next 3 will be on 2 weeks later.

This summer class is the most difficult one I ever met! Too hot to do the conversion, and all kind of challenges jumps out during the job, from places you never think of, take bellows as example, I made about 6 bellows prototype, and modified blue print 16 times, finally grabbed the key.

Then the front standard, factory went wrong on dimension FOUR times! can you imagine?! It is damn too hot!

Not yet mounting the RF housing, tonight's job.

Look carefully, the left one is a little bit small size on bellows, will replace it after shooting.

Bellows, bellows....

Bellows was re-sized for Xenotar 150, thinking that no matter the extension length or front opening size, is perfect fit to Big Eyes.

Mounting Xenotar 150 is an in-direct procedure, rear element needs to be taken off before front element/shutter mounted, then screw back the rear element.


I keep the bellows in no extension situation when screwing back the rear element, then the problem comes. Bellows is so perfect fit to the lens, the front opening size is just slightly bigger than rear element, so when I screwed the rear in no extension situation, some folds in front of the bellows were clipped, that is Ok since bellows has enough folds for rail movement, but it looks awful. Folds will not be clipped if you screwing the rear when bellows extended in half or full length, but that makes a deep hole and brings difficulty for screwing.

Solution? re-size the bellows, make front opening size even bigger, so no folds were clipped when bellows in no extension situation.

Byron got three version of bellows sizes now, Khaki color shows opening for #0 shutter lens, Blue opening shows the size for any other lenses other than Xenotar 150, and the Gray one shows the opening size exclusively for Xenotar 150, the Big Eyes.

All three sizes are bigger than 110B's original bellows.

And the RF parts was sent for fine tuning, for this lens, mechanist told me he needs to take part all RF parts, we will wait and see.

Before it came back, I made Byron as a simple view camera, and test the stability. Lens is heavy, but front standard works well. Without RF viewing windows, and my model keeps moving on chair, it is hard to capture him and the little tree he planted.

No folds are clipped if rear element is mounted when bellows extension in full length, but rather hard to do, and you can see one front side ridge of bellows were bumped..., reasons for re-sizing a bigger bellows is obviously clear.

Film expired? no matter developing time I changed, saturation is way less than what I saw.

Big eyes are coming

Finally, this conversion batch is going to on calibration stage, meaning they will be home soon, I hope the owners are not too rush, I can vision that calibration for Xenotar 2.8/150 is more critical compared to other 150mm lenses.

Weather is uncommonly hot, not easy to work and keep calm for a long period of time, and how is your place? Global warming is coming, and no one can stop it!

What the hell is going on this summer?

Too hot! everyday I made jars of lemonade and still not enough to deal with the weather, my dog Sam gets very lazy, lying on the floor everyday, only thing to make sure he is alive is calling his name and to see if his tail wave or not.

I got sunburn on my arms and feet, only 30min to convenient store on bike, no way you can get rid of it, BIG HOT sun, it must be the hottest summer I ever have, but who know next year?

On the final stage of this batch, now I do works most of time in midnight, much cooler, and kids are all sleep, no need to fight with them, I am captain Hook in their game, one of the leading role.  

Re-Open this blog for answering the request

Hi, everyone who is concerning this blog, I am working on a special batch of conversion, the Big eyes for Byron, and am re-organizing the contents, planning to re-open the blog next month, but I found that I am stupid to answer lots of mails to explain this situation, so here I re-open the blog, but you will find that most of contents are taken off, for they are going to be re-organized.

So, this blog will show you something new next month, please be patient, and, leave me some message if you really like my blog, I too need some encouragement.

Thank you very much
Daniel
salihonba@gmail.com

This blog is going to close for awhile.

One bad news, I will close my blog from July for a short period of time, due to some annoyed people and the unknown virus attacks and I've had enough!

"Something you should know about Byron version 2" in progress

Hope I can finish it by the end of this month......

I did not realize that Byron will develop a different version of front standard/ lens board system, all these are inspired by my dearest clients.

Inspired by HK Jack, flim holder blocking plate transfer into a rotating way, eliminate the risk of losing it; by Walter, a level bubble add at the top of RF housing; by NY Jeff, Xenotar 2.8/150 becomes available on Byron, and by German Bear, I developed new front standard/ lens board for his 270mm lens.

Thank all of you, you bring Byron system so many great ideas, and turn it more flexible.

But Jack, to bring #3 shutter into system.........., that is really scary.....