I picked up the 12x20 yesterday. I was wrong about what I 'thought' Craig has vs. what he really is loaning me. Turns out it is a 12x20 Korona and has several lenses with it.

Craig is the champion of taking weird combinations of stuff and make it work together. I have read about a lot of lenses being used for ULF here, but the lenses he has with this camera I have not seen mentioned. The first is a 21 1/4 inch Kodak Copying Ektanon f/11-128. He got it out of a Xerox machine and it has the correct threads on the rear to screw into an Ilex shutter. He's used it on his 4x5 'Dorff and has made a lensboard adapter to go to the Korona.

Interesting thing about this lens is that the engraving on the front of the lens barrel is reversed so that it can be read properly from above with a prism attatchment.

Second is from the 1880-90's or so, a barrel lens that is very beautiful. It's a Voigtlander Collinar III No. 7 f/7.7-64.

It is a symmetrical design which allows it to be mounted on the camera in an interesting way. For composition the lens is mounted with the lens pointing in towards the bellows. This way there is less chance of the bellows vignetting, but you have to remove it to stop it down and to use the 'shutter'. I use the phrase loosely, as it is just a piece of black felt taped to the back of the lensboard and hangs down and blocks light from passing through. I call it a 'right-hand shutter', but if you were left-handed, you could easily call it a 'left-handed shutter'.

The lens just *barely* covers 12x20, Craig has mentioned he has trimmed down negatives in the past when it bothers him. My initial brief test shows that there is some vignetting at the corners, but I didn't think it was so bad as to ruin the use of the lens. Testing with film will show how much it really covers.

For composing you mount it with the flap hanging down out of the way, then you remove lens, stop down, and reattatch with the flap hanging in front of lens.

The third lens I'll use is one of my own, a 24-inch RedDot Artar.

Nothing special, except that it mounts right into the lensboard that the 21 inch lens mounts into.

I know Craig has had a new bellows made which looks beautiful, but the rails only have about 22-23-ish inches of movement. I was unable to focus the 24 inch lens indoors at about 30 feet, so I'll see what it looks like outside and stopped down.

The tripod is a Reis Model A with the tilt-plane head. I had considered selling it a while ago, but am very glad I did not. In fact, it looks a tad bit small with the 12x20 mounted on it. I have a Gitzo monopod that I'll see about using to support the front standard. It seems like it really hangs out there and needs something to support it.

I'd never really seen photographs of this large of a camera before, so I thought that there would be others that would get a kick out of seeing such interesting photographic equipment.