Oh Man! Plaubel Makina III! Back to RF.

Excellent Kai-San !

Combiplan Six 6.5x9cm J Lane Glass Plates loaded by Nokton48, on Flickr

This is six dummy Jason Lane 6.5x9cm Glass Plates, loaded into a Combiplan Rack now properly adjusted. I have a lot of Plaubel Makina Glass Plate Holders, purchased in various bundle deals. And quite a few Makina Holders are loaded ready to go. About ASA 1 with most developers I have tried. Fun ahead. Need some more liter graduates for stop and fix. For small runs this will be great, planning to use PMK+

My plans for Combiplan Dev Tanks 2 by Nokton48, on Flickr

This is coming from Germany. In the box old stock.

My plans for Combiplan Dev Tanks 1 by Nokton48, on Flickr

Went to World of Used Photography yesterday, bought these two matching Combiplan Developing Tanks. Up to now I have been developing rotary using JOBO 2500 series, working good for me for really big runs. Wanted something smaller, more like dipn'dunk, daylight lid is a plus. My thought is to load my European size films (six at a time), then drop into dev tanks, cover on. I checked in the store, ran water and the dev tank dosen't leak when inverted. The tank labeled stop bath DOES leak when inverted, so would be good as a small deep tank. On the left front is a rack of 6.5cmx9cm XRAY film, on the right is six sheets of 9x12cm B&W (this rack has all the pieces and is complete). I just won one more Combiplan, complete unbroken, with all the original parts, from Germany. That gives me three tanks and racks to configure in different ways for different processing runs. Any thoughts on Complan use from out there?
 
SONY DSC by Nokton48, on Flickr

This is my 7.3cm Orthar, it fits screw-mount Plaubel Makinas. It takes the same filter as the 100mm lenses, which is good. I've been told it's a 4/4 Double Gauss optical design. Best not wider than F11 for best results. Plaubel made an optical finder which slipped over the standard one. Great for wide angle shooting with III or IIIR handheld.
 
Discovering the 19cm Makina Lens by Nokton48, on Flickr

Actually I have two of these, one focuses closer than the other. Both look excellent on the ground glass. I've finished a roll of Eastman 5222 XX 120, in a 6.5x9cm Makina Film Back. To focus you set the camera focus to infinity, then rangefinder focus and note the distance. Then rotate the helical on the lens to whatever distance you noted. I've been doing this and it's very accurate and precise, I'm planning to shoot more tests. So far I have shot with the lens on the right, with #1 Yellow Makina FIlter and Makina Lens Hood. Easy and user friendly process, I think i like using this, lots of uses for telephoto photography. The viewfinder glass it gridded out to use the 19cm and very price as a way to frame. I'm having fun discovering this lens. Next I'm trying Kentmere 400 and Foma 200 pushed as far as possible. New addition is Foma Retropan 320 Soft developed in the Retropan developer.
 
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Plaubel Makina III Efke 100 by Nokton48, on Flickr

Shooting some Efke PL100 (my alltime fave) 6.5x9cm Cut Film, in a Plaubel Makina Planfilm Holder. These holders are heavy suckers but make for an extremely compact but heavy Makina footprint. Shooting small cut film is a joy. I have accumulated over fifty Makina Planfilm Holders, through numerous bundle deals. I do love the bokeh of the F2.9 Anticomar, it's quite unique wide-open IMO. This neg was scanned years ago with my 4490.
 
Two new Plaubel Makiflex Items by Nokton48, on Flickr

Two new to me items for my Plaubel Makiflexes. First is a PN1/341 medium length cone lensboard, permanently glued in is a Industar-4 21cm F4.5 Tessar type lens. It focuses perfectly to infinity on a Maki, I really wanted this board, I don't have one! The lens has mild fungus between the elments, I have baked the lens out in the sun for several days. Hopefully I will learn how to remove the elements, to clean out the dried fungus. BTW it's not too bad, a small bloom mainly at one edge. Looking forward to cleaning it out, but it's lovely to look through as it is. I'm interested in it also as a Maki historical piece.

The other item that arrived is an Auto Makiflex Shutter, marked F5.6. So what does it fit? In my European Makiflex literture I see the 180mm and 210mm F5.6 Symmar lenses offered in auto shutter by the factory. Very rare and I've only seen them offered in Europe. I have a chrome barrel 180mm f5.6 Symmar, it's a perfect fit and I think that's it exactly. The mechanism needs cleaning and CLA, the blades are greasy. I'll take it to my repair Guy and see what happens. This shutter fits good on a Flat Auto Makiflex Lens Board and also looks great through the viewfinder.
 
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SONY DSC by Nokton48, on Flickr


This 210mm F4.5 N-51 lens arrived yesterday $75 from Serbia. New in box never used, with working flange, I used shim washers inside the Plaubel Tubus. to adjust for perfect infinity focus wide open. The lens is a sleeper (some say a DUD), but I do like it a lot. A Tessar optical design, a lot like my Schneider Xenars in the "look through", a bit less contrasty though to my eye. Quite sharp and pleasant bokeh. I look forward to shooting with this one. Shown on my Plaubel Auto Makiflex #1, I also redid some of the light trapping front and back on this camera, it's all ready to go again.
 
SONY DSC by Nokton48, on Flickr

I have been doing some preliminary testing with my Makina IIIR/Focal Plane Shutter, viewing the groundglass very sharply with my excellent Ednalite Magnifier. At infinity focus, with the tongs in the WA position, the 100mm F4.2 Orthometar is defiantly very sharp at infinity. So the question now becomes, using the rangfinder focused at various distances, and the distance then reset to the focal plane scale just under the front viewing lens, how sharp is image on the groundglass?? After some handheld testing at 1.5 meters, 3 meters, 5 meters, and 10 meters, EVERYTHING APPEARS SHARP THROUGH THE MAGNIFIER ON THE GROUND GLASS. I will retest again, using the Ednalite, but it appears I am golden. Next testing with be with Makina 8 shot backs, using 120 Kentmere 400, so I can achieve action stopping shutter speeds up to 1/1000, which is the whole point of using the focal plane shutter. One point I have noticed is that it is difficult to set the exact distance which I transpose onto the focal plane scale. It is very small scale physically and it is touchy to accurately set the focus distance. To not be in a hurry helps a lot! I think this is going to work for me, my camera seems to be set up properly to use this stuff. YAY. Time will tell. Now to find some test subjects that need to be frozen in time.
 
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21cm F6.3 Tele Makinar hope this fits my Makina II by Nokton48, on Flickr

I made an offer for this 21cm F6.3 Plaubel Tete-Makinar. The offer was accepted and the lens is on it's way to me from Poland. I am hoping it will mount properly on my Makina II camera, it looks like maybe it might?? The rear mount is similar to the one in my original Makina II catalog, although it does not have the sloping black rear cell, but still it looks like it MIGHT fit. I am crossing my fingers and toes. Finally it comes with an Olde Plaubel Filter which sweetens the deal for me. :)

1936 Plaubel Makina II Brochure 2 by Nokton48, on Flickr


1936 vintage original Plaubel Makina II lenses in the catalog.
 
Plaubel Makina III Ilford FP4+ by Nokton48, on Flickr

Here is a Plaubel Makina "action shot". I was rocking back and forth while looking through the rangefinder, trying to get the left eye closest to me in sharp focus. And of course the horses were excited and constantly moving about, not so easy to do with this type of camera! But here it is.......... I think I was using the 100mm F4.2 lens, I was trying it out for the first time.
 
Standard Makiflex No.3 Bundle New to Me by Nokton48, on Flickr

I saw this bundle on German Ebay and made an offer, it was accepted. The Stovepipe is quite unusual, I've never seen this one before. The 13.5cm early Zeiss Tessar on Peco Junior recessed board will get some use too. The Standard Makiflex is quite useful to me, big lenses fit into the cameras inner throat. So now I have three Standard Makiflexes, and three of the Auto Aperture Makiflexes. This one will get some use I'm sure of it. This one has 28.880 actuations according to the counter on the side, so lots of life left in it. LOL
 
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SONY DSC by Nokton48, on Flickr

This just arrived from Prague. 21cm F6.3 Plaubel Tele-Makinar, appears to screw OK onto my Makina II. But focus is off at infinity, can be made sharp on the glass by refocusing the tongs to about five meters to my eye, so something is way wonky. Perhaps this early screw mount one is actually to fit something else? BTW my 100mm F2.9 front and back cells are SPOT ON at infinity, so it's not a rangefinder problem. If I use the lens on a tripod and focus on the glass, it is usuable. It came with an adapter, and a "Mittel" Plaubel Filter which is mid yellow colored. The black Knurled Viewfinder I found in my Plaubel box, might be a 21cm one, I'm not sure. But it looks OK on the camera. Will have to test this one with some film, it's worth what I paid for it.
 
SONY DSC by Nokton48, on Flickr

Standard Plaubel Makiflex Number Three arrived yesterday in a bundle from a shoppe in Prague. Good conditioned body fully functional, comes with 135 Tessar on Plaubel Recessed Board. Also a 240mm Tele-Xenar in Compur shutter, I transplanted this Tele-Xenar onto a 3D printed Peco Junior board printed in Italy. Shown on my Long Rail Peco Junior, camera focused carefully at infinity, plenty of rail available for closer in shooting. Need to put yellow medium filters and lens hoods on these new lenses, and try 'em out. 135 is perfectly collimated to focus just a teeny past infinity, so perfectly constructed IMO. Quite a bit of maching skill shown here, many of my Makiflexes from Prague have been tweeked and modded. Very clever technicians. The Stovepipe might be legit Olde Makiflex, I remember seeing one other, so maybe? Maybe in some literature too? Both of these cameras take Plaubel Makina Film Backs and Planfilm Holders.
 
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