a 6x17 cm panorama camera

This is the first real camera modification that I ever undertook. I had an old turn of the century Obrig camera that took a very strange film size, somewhere between 8x10 and 5x7, though I can't remember the exact size. I was originally going to get a 5x7 back from an old Graflex or whatever, but decided instead to fabricate a 6x17 back and holders myself.

Before I did any work to the camera back, I needed a working film holder. After looking around a various holders, I decided to augment a 5x7 wooden Graflex holder, the kind with four screws and a metal bar across the top of the holder. These holders are fairly common, as are the 8x10 versions. the real trick with these holders is that the felt traps and slide guides are held together with screws, not glue, which made removeing, rescalling and replaceing the felt traps easier.

My first film choice was standard 120 roll film, but this proved to be too thin and difficult load in tests made prior to building the first holder. In the end 5x7 sheet film curt in half was used as a model to fabricate the film holders. The final film size was 2.5 x 7 inches. The metal top plates and felt light traps were removed and resized to the width of the new holder. The film guides were split then joined again using the film as a guide and a thin backer plate for rigidity. The resized film guides were then fitted into trimmed side pieces, one with the top and one with the bottom cross pieces attached, sort of like two "l's" fitting together. The felt trap and recut metal plates were replaced, and the bottom trap doors carefully recut to fit tightly into the film holder's bottom notch. This proved to be the most difficult, and nearly always leaked light, I ended up running a thin strip of gaffers tape around the bottom of each holder every time I loaded film, this pretty much solved the problem.

The camera modification was much easier to build than the holder. I used the holder as a guide, then built a frame around that holder. I used an actual holder with ground glass placed where the film guide went to form the focusing stage and assure that the ground glass was in the right place. I actually ground the glass myself, using emory board, I will never do that again, but it works... sort of. I used the springs from the Camera's original back to hold the ground glass frame to the stage.

The camera's bellows were also shot, so I replaced them with a new set made by follwing instructions I found somewhere on the internet, but the exact location escapes me.