I would like to say thanks to all who have responded to my questions, I eventually settled on a MPP MK V11 with a 90mm lens. Just a few more questions, I promise that these are the last!!. 1; Can I use the Cokin P system with this lens,without causing vignetting ?. 2; Will I have to keep the bed dropped all the time to use this lens. Cheers. Lee.

-- lee pengelly (leepengelly@aol.com), March 19, 2002

Answers

Lee,

The bed must be dropped if you are using a 90 mm lens on an MPP mk VII unless you are using plenty of rising front. In this case the bed disappears out of view. Check your screen. 90 mm is an awkward focal length for the MPP as on a flat lens board the front is right where the back track ends. If you are not using rising front there are coned boards available. Not sure about the Cokin P - I will try it and let you know. What 90mm lens do you have?

Colin Carron

-- Colin Carron (CICarron@aol.com), March 19, 2002.

Lee,

There is a neat trick to using a 90mm on the MPP that I discovered after a bit of anguish. As stated earlier, the 90mm ends up right at the hinge of the track. I did this to cure my problem...I cut another pair of notches just ahead of the rear screws so the standard would lock in further to the rear. Then release the latch which allows the extension bed to slide, and slide it to the rear. This will allow you to focus without trouble. I nearly always use lens rise, so I have never had the bed intrude in the image. This has been by best solution. You can also mount the front standard on the rear rails inside the body and use back movement to slide the back to the rear, but this requires some sort of spacer guage to get everything even.

Hope this helps. The MPPs are fine cameras.

Regards,

-- Doug Paramore (Dougmary@alaweb.com), March 19, 2002.

Lee,

The Cokin P works without vignetting on all the lenses I tried down to a 65/8 Super Angulon.

And yes the MPP is so much fun to use it has its own club of users/collectors who can be contacted at www.mppusers.freeuk.com where cunning tips as above, spare bits and other useful advice can all be had for a pittance. Did you know you can get wide angle bellows for it for example?

-- Colin Carron (CICarron@aol.com), March 20, 2002.

The Cokin P system should be OK with any 90mm lens, but since you don't say exactly what the lens is, it's difficult to be 100% certain.

The camera bed needn't necessarily be dropped for landscape-format use. With a 90mm Grandagon-N fitted to my MkVII, the baseboard only pokes into the bottom of the frame when the rotating back is set vertically. If you rotate the whole camera for vertical use, then you needn't drop the bed at all. This might not be the case with more compact 90mm lenses, though.
Another trick with the MPP and wide-angles, if you don't need any front movements, is to pull the back extension out fully. Then the front standard can stay pretty much within the camera body, making the sled more secure in the short length of inner focusing track.
You might find a conical extension lensboard more convenient with some designs of wide-angle, too, but it really depends on the back-focus of the lens, and whether you need to use any front rise or cross movements.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), March 20, 2002.

One other thing. You can avoid dropping the bed of the camera another way. If you flip the lens standard back slightly, and pull out the top of the camera back to the same angle, this points the lens upward while still parallel to the film plane. Then tilt the whole camera forward to bring the lens and film plane vertical, and re-centre the lens with the rising front. You now have the bed clear of the lens field, while the two parts of the focusing rails are still in line with each other. (That's if the top of the front standard doesn't collide with the camera body. Again, it depends on the particular lens and focusing distance.)
Happy puzzling.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), March 21, 2002.