That leaky bellows on a Zeiss Ikon converted me to digital repair

I stopped by the big camera swap meet in Portland last Saturday to browse. A guy had a beautiful old Zeiss Ikon folder with bellows like a sieve - light leaks everywhere. He wanted $150 for it and I almost walked away. But then he showed me a digital conversion he'd done on another folder using a cheap Sony sensor and a 3D printed back. It looked clean and honestly worked better than I expected. Has anyone else tried a digital conversion on a folding camera?

2 comments

2 Comments

finley_flores286d ago

Did your buddy run into any trouble fitting that Sony sensor in without cutting up the bellows too bad? My friend Mike tried this on an old Voigtlander and ended up having to 3D print a whole new rear shell because the original metal frame just wasn't deep enough. He got it working but said the focus was finicky because the folding mechanism wasn't designed for the sensor depth.

roseb626d ago

Did your buddy check if the lens itself was actually designed for that sensor size in the first place? A lot of old folders had lenses that didn't fully cover the Sony's frame, so you lose the edges or get weird vignetting that can't be fixed. I've seen folks swap the whole lens board from a different camera just to get proper coverage, but then you're dealing with mismatched screw threads and shimming the thing back into infinity focus. Focus might be finicky because the bellows are sagging too, even a little bit changes the distance to the film plane.