hi guys,

little question on a filter system. using circular glass at the moment, very happy for B/W & polariser on colour, but am needing some grads. lee holder with hi-techs is probably the way.

has anyone had any problems with the lee holder on a linhof tech field camera? ie. is the flat bed restricting movement of the filter? dropping the bed stops me from squaring off the lens and back.

have not been able to play in a shop, and figure you guys are the best to ask. thanks for your time!

regards dave.

-- david hempenstall (narkdude@hotmail.com), February 15, 2002

Answers

David: I have a Master Technika and I use the Lee system. The only problem I found is with the ApoRonar 300 mm because the lens projects only so slightly out from the lens board that the Lee adapter ring is obstructed by the lens pull. I have solved that problem by adding an expansion ring to the lens to which I attach the Lee adapter ring and in this way the lens front projects out just enough to avoid the problem. When using grads you may have to drop the bed and raise and tilt the lens standard backwards to allow room for the grad to be placed low enough. Raising and tilting should allow you to square off the lens standard. Yes, Lee is simpler with cameras where the front of the lens can be adjusted to always project out of the bed but the other conveniences of the Technika IMO make it all worth it. Another thing concerns polarizers. Lee now has a round polarizer and adapter which can be rotated independently of the holder. With the square pola, rotating the holder can also require the procedure just mentioned to prevent the holder's corner rotation from being obstructed by the camera bed and it is a royal pain. I think the round polarizer is a must with the technika. Of course, there is nothing to prevent you from installing a B&W round polarizer before Lee, except vigneting with some lenses. I also would like to hear from others' solution to the problems using Lee on Technikas. Regards,

-- Julio Fernandez (glue,max@sympatico.ca), February 16, 2002.

I used to use the Lee system on my Technika V. I thought it was very inconvenient. A polarizer was impossible to use with most of my lenses (90 mm F 5.6 Super Angulon, 150 mm G Claron, 210 Apo Symmar, 300 mm Nikon M) because the camera bed obstructed the Lee hood and prevented it from turning unless the bed was droppoed. Of course dropping the bed then required that the front and rear standards be brought to parallel positions. so that wasn't much fun. Other filters could be used with most of the lenses as long as you remembered to screw the hood/filter onto the front of the lens before putting the lens on the camera. If that wasn't done then the camera bed interfered with screwing on the hood so you had to either drop the bed and bring the front and rear standards parallel or use front rise to get the lens up higher so that the bed didn't interfere or a combination of both. Another possibility was to rack the lens all the way out to the front of the bed, screw on the filter, then rack the lens back to where you wanted it to be. I liked the Lee system a lot with my previous camera (a Tachihara) but found it a pain to use with the Technika. I now use both glass filters and the Lee rubber band/gel filter system with the Technika and like both better.

-- Brian Ellis (bellis60@earthlink.net), February 16, 2002.