Cambo Wide 4x5 Impressions?

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Does anyone have any experience with the Cambo Wide 4x5 cameras?

-- Denis Hill (dionysius@home.com), June 30, 1999

Answers

I rented one about a year ago. It was for a group photo of about 100 people. Being it has no tilts or swings the image was superb. I am seriously thinking of buying one.

A few -'s : The shift can be applied in only one direction at a time. Also, there is only a tripod socket for the horizontal position. And: Each lens is mounted in its' own helical & lens "cone". Therefore they are very expensive. Also it does not have the fastest of lenses. I believe it would not accept a 90 5.6 or 4.5 lens. The Schneider 90 is f8.

Afew +'s : Very parallel lens & film plane. The pics I took were fabulous corner to corner. I did not use it handheld but it looks like it would be very easy to do so. It looks very well made.

Even with its' inherent limitations I would love to get one. Right now Calumet has a special which includes an optical viewfinder. I did rent the finder but it did not have the mask for the 90. It is very nice.

-- Guy Anderson (gmrshall@pacbell.net), June 30, 1999.


I posted a long review of this camera on this site (check the archives under "Cameras" and look for a thread called "Impressions: Cambo Wide...") and there were some alternatives discussed in response.

As you'll see, I only have experience with the 47mm lens, but I tried to make the review applicable to other uses of the camera. Feel free to e-mail me if you have other questions.

-- Simon (fourthpres@aol.com), June 30, 1999.


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