© 1997, Joseph O'Neil
For a complete description of pricing, history, etc, check out the Bender web site at: http://www.benderphoto.com This FAQ of mine is written to help people new to both large format photography and the Bender camera gather information and decide if they wish to build one. My experience is with the 4x5, so my comments should be taken that way. I should also point out that I have expereince as a hobbyist woodworker (my father once trained as a cabinet maker, and has taught me much), and experience as an ATMer (amature telescope maker), so I did not fear taking on this project. Finally, there are people on the web who build thier own view cameras from scratch, and if you are really dedicated, you can explore that route too. Two excellent places on the web to explore this option are the pages of Jon Grepstad or Doug Bardell.
The Bender is a wood kit that you assemble yourself to build either a 4x5 or an 8x10 monorail view camera. Once assembled, you have a fully functional view camera. Remember that the primary purpose of a camera is to hold film and lens together in a manner to produce the best possible picture. The Bender is not a camera on par with a Sinar, Wisner or Lindhof by any stretch of the imagination, but it is still quite a functional camera. For example, a Bender with a 90mm Super Angulon and Txax 400 film willwork just like brand name camera with the same lens and film. This being said, there are advantages to a brand name camera.
PROS:
-inexpensive-
-easy to build-
-lightweight-
CONS:
-not suitable for serious, commercial work without modification-
-you have to build it-
-lightweight-
One of those situations where you look at the glass as either being half full or half empty. Two major advantages you have with the Bender over any other camera you will ever use or own is the fact that you built it yourself and it does not look like a professional camera. I cannot overstate the effect it has on both the general public and other photographers when you humbly shrug and say you "built it yourself". If you ever do turn professional, but do not wish to appear as one (many places will allow amatures to photograph for free, but will charge professional photographers a fee for use of facilities), using your Bender is a great way to go.
If you are a hands on, do-it-yourselfer, the Bender is a great way to go. If you have two left thumbs, or are in a hurry, then avoid the Bender. Viable alternatives in this case would be the Calumet Cadet or used Speed or Crown Graphic. I have no facts to back this up, but I imagine that a good number of kits are started and never finished becasue while the kit is easy to build, it is time consuming and requires commitment. The Bender is not an easy shortcut, nor is large format photography. Let me put it this way: 35mm photography is a job, medium format photography is a skill, and large format photogrpahy is a way of life.
Once you order your camera, and before you even receive it, there are a few items you MUST have ready. If you cannot obtain these items, then you are wasting your time ordering this kit. These items are:
-a 4x5 film holder - you will need this to accurately build the camera back;
-clamps - you can never have enough clamps when building the Bender. How many is "not enough"? I had a dozen clamps of various types - C-clamps, corner clamps, frame clamps - and I still wished I had twice as many!
-wood glue - plain old white glue works fine;
-carpenter's square- a good, steel ruler will help too;
-wood drill and small bits- you will need to pre-drill some holes to place the screws into. I also reccomend a wax candle to rub your screws on before installing - makes life easier.
-micrometer- or some sort of very accurate measuring device. The only real critical aspect of the camera is placing the ground glass at exactly the same depth as the film plane in the film holder. Jay Bender does describe how to experiment and shim the ground glass into place after a couple of test shots, but I reccomend doing it right from the start.
-finishing products- you will need fine sandpaper to finish off edges, some flat black paint to cover inside surfaces of the camera (buy a small jar of acryllic paint from a model/hobby shop), some phillips (star head) screwdrivers, and a clean, flat surface to work on. I had a small sheet (approx 2x2 ft) of plexiglass I used on top of my workbench. A clean piece of FLAT plywood will work too.
-wax paper- lay this down , wax side up, on your work surface so that any glue that seeps out from your joints overnight does not glue your camera part to your work surface.
-a good loupe- the only way to focus accurately any view camera is to place a good loupe on the surface of the glass and focus that way. There is a slight problem however. Good loupes will cost you an arm, leg, and sometimes your left gonad. Cheap lupes are an absolute waste of time. The only loupe I have found inbetween the cheapies and the good ones is the Nikon lupe, which cost me $50 CDN (about $30 US). You can see it pictured on top of my Bender in the first picture.
-a lens- yes, you should have a lens purchased and ready before you start, for a couple of reasons. First, if you are going to use a lens smaller than 150mm, then buy the bag belows kit. I can barely focus my 135mm Kodak WF Ektar, the bellows is so tight. I reccomend something it the range of 180 to 210mm as a first lens. Buy whatever you can afford, but used, plain, Kodak lenses, as long as the shutters are working, will do a good job for you. Wide Feild and Commercial Ektars (I have one of each) are excellent lenses (more money too), and the only thing better is a modern lens form Schieder, Rodenstock, Fuji or Nikon.
Second reason is to have your lens mounted in the lens board, so that just before you stain, varnish, or paint your camera and put the finishing touches on it, you can test out the lens on the camera, just play aroudn with it. If you have made any serious error, it is easier to repair before you have varnished or painted it. I also feel it is a test - if you are not serious enough to actually buy a view camera lens ahead of time, you may not be serious enough about building the camera.
Before you do anything, read the instructions from beginning to end.
It took me just over 3 weeks to build my camera from beginning to end. I worked on it almost every night, but only for about an hour each night. Building this camera is doen one piece at a time, and the piece you glued together the night before is then combined with a piece you glued together two nights ago to form a third, bigger, new piece. Wood glue should be allowed to dry a full 24 hours before you do anything with the glued pieces.
Before you do anything, read the instructions from beginning to end.
I also reccomend you gule together two peices, then on the second day, drill the holes and place in your brass screws.
Before you do anything, read the instructions from beginning to end.
On the subject of brass screws, one thing that absolutely infuriates me is the American obsession with phillips head screws. If you have the chance to order from Canada, the Robertson design, patented in Canada during WW1, si a sqaure head design that allows maximun torque to be applied and you will never strip a head off a screw. The only real danger of Robertson screws is you can apply too much torque and tear the top of the screw right off.
Before you do anything, read the instructions from beginning to end.
To drill a hole in the lensoard, you should take both the board and the lens to a machine shop, have them measure the diameter of the lens,a nd drill the board preciesly. Probally will cost you a good $15 to have this done. One of my best friends is a machinist with a milling machine and lathe in his backyard shop, so I was able to have a few lensboards drilled for a bottle of whiskey. :)
Before you do anything, read the instructions from beginning to end.
Take your time. As I said, if you are in a hurry, buy a camera. One thing I should point out is that you never quite finish building your Bender. Every person I have ever talked to who uses thier Bender on the long term basis modifies, adds and changes things about the camera over time. Jay Bender himself acknowledges this fact, and likes to hear back from people who have made changes. Wsiely he does not reccomend this to beginners, for the job is to build it and get it working, then worry about changes. The ideas you will ahve about modifications will come from actuall use, so wait untill you start operating the camera before you think about anything else.
Before you do anything, read the instructions from beginning to end.
When I built my Bender, I ordered an extra lens board for two reasons. First I realized that I might buy a second lens someday. Secondly, I glued and clamped the peices of the front frame around the spare lens board to ensure an accurate fit. I did the same thing on the rear film back using the 4x5 film holder I had bought. Just make sure you vacmun out the film holder real good after construction is done.
Before you do anything, read the instructions from beginning to end.
Placing the ground glass with a micrometer is very easy. Take a sheet of film, even if you have to sacrifice an unexposed sheet, and place it in your film holder. Remove the dark slide totally. Measure with your micrometer the exact distance from the edge of the film holder to the front surface of the film. Keep your micrometer set, and use it to place the ground surface of the glass to the exact distance from the edge of the wood int he glass holder. Very simple, effective,a nd works great.
Before you do anything, read the instructions from beginning to end.
If you notice on my ground glass there are some lines. I made these using the carpenter's square and a very fine, permenant, black marker. I recommend placing a few lines on yourself, and doing so before you install the gorund glass to insure, accurate and suare lines. While professional 4x5 cameras have several lines on the ground glass (my old Orbit 4x5 has 8 by 9 lines on the glass), I have foudn that the 2 by 2 lines seen here work just fine. How far to place apart? I placed my lines exactly 1.25 inches in from the edge of the glass.
The round spot you see on the glass is an old trick I read out of a 50 year old "Popular Mechanics Photo Handbook". Using a small circle guide (such as one of those plastic stencils you fnd in a child's math set), take a Q-tip with an extremely small, small, amount of plain mineral oil, and make a small circle on the glass. This allows for focusing in some dim light situations. It is not a perfect fix, and does not always work well, so if you decide to try it, do no more than a cirle of a diameter of 0.5 Inch (2 cm).
Geared movements. For fine focusing, I woudl reccomend replacing the square tube and wood slides witha geared movement of some time. Where do you find such items? Surplus stores are a good place to start. Two of my favourite palces on the web for weird surplus stuff is Surplus Shack and Herbach & Redmond. They may not have what you are looking for, as stock constatnly changes, but keep looking around.
Avoid very strong winds, as the light weight of the Bender makes it vulneralbe to wind shake. This should not be viewed a detraction however, since hiking with a view camera can be very tiring after some time, and the lightweight of the Bender makes it a joy to travel with.
The Bender can be a bit fragile if you rush through things, but the whole point about ANY large format camera is taking your time, so do so!
One great joy about the Bender is it has the greatest range of movements in all directions - tlts, swings and lifts, that can be found on any camera. Do not be in a rush however to try out all the movements, for in real terms, a little goes a long way. For landscapes, portraits and even architectural work, sometimes a shift or tilt of something as small as 5 degrees can make all the difference in the world. Some studio work and focusing problems will require sharper movements, but all those advertisements you see in magazines where a 4x5 camera is twisted up like a pretzel are done more to make an impression than relate to actuall use.
In the end, using the Bender is not very different from using any other view camera. Focusing is a little more crude than a camera with geared movements, but then if you need that level of sophistication, go for a better camera from the start, or modify it yourself as others have done. It is a very easy camera to work with otherwise. Some people ask why they could not just buy a used Bender from somebody who has built one, but I doubt you could ever find one. You put too much of yourself into the camera when you build it, such that the tought of selling it is almost as repugnant as abandoning one's child. Of all the cameras I own or have owned, I could see selling them off to move up to something better should the chance come along - all except for my Bender. That is a family artifact I hope to someday pass down to my children, and thier children.
Some #400 to #500 carbide grit. If you do not have any amature telescope maker's nearby (ATMer's), look around for a Lapidry (rock grinding) supplier or some place like Edmund Scientific. Post a question on the sci.astro.amatuer nesgroup to ask for the location of nearest supplier to you, or a friendly amature astornomer willing to sell you some. You will only need a small amount - say 1 ounce or 30 grams, but you will probally have to buy a larger quanitity. Do not worry, the stuff never goes bad, so you can keep it near forever. What is the differnce between #400 and #500 grit? #500 is a finer grit, and will give you a finer surface on your glass. Now, as to which is better - a coarser or finer surface on your glass is a lot like asking which is better, Kodak or Fuji. Lots of strong opinions out there, but no real winner (besides, we all know the real answer is "Ilford" :) ). I perfer slightly finer look myself.
Have a local glass shop cut you TWO pieces of glass, perhaps 3-4mm thick, preferably with the edges taken down a bit so you do not cut your hands. Make sure you ahve the dimensions EXACTLY as you need it to fit inside you glass holder. A 4x5 sheet film camera may not always have exactly 4x5 inch sheet of glass - variation of an 1/16th of an inch can be a real pain in the butt if it does not fit. :(
A bucket with lukewarm water in it. A small spay bottle of water will be helpfull too.
An old pair of utility gloves (so you do not cut your hands - or just be carefull)
First, a warning. Never dump this stuff down the household drain - the carbide grit that is. It can really clog up your drain. It is not toxic or harmfull, unless you eat the stuff, but it is very messy stuff because it is so small and seems to get into EVERYTHING it touches. Do this work in a basement, garage, workshop, outside, just not over a good carpet in your living room in in your kitchen.
1) - place about a teaspon of grit on top of one piece of glass. Spray lightly with water, better to start with too little and add it as you need some. Place the second piece on top of your wet grit. If you are grind a 4x5 sheet of glass, you can do this in your hands while wearing a heavy pair of old work gloves. For 5x7 or 8x10 glass, take an old peice of plywood, cover with a plastic garbage bag, and place one piece of glass flat on the plastic, the other piece on top.
2) - if you have ever sharpened a knife, the process is similar, but with differences. The idea is to rub the two sheets of glass together so a that a sort of "slurry" forms between the sheets of glass. You may need to add more water. The effect is simlar to the slurry formed when you sharpen a knife on an oilstone.
3) - warning - grinding glass will make a noise some people do not like - kinda like fingernails on a blackboard. Rub the two sheets to together in random patterns - circular, in a "W" pattern, and others. Start from the centre and gradually work your way out to the edges. Grind for 2-3 minutes, untill you hear the "pitch" of the grinding noise lower in tone, a signal that the grit is wearing down.
4) wash of both sheets of glass in your bucket of water. Examine both sheets of glass. See how much of the glass surface isfrosted as compared to clear. Place some more grit and water on the top sheet of glass this time, and grind again. Or, half way through grinding, flip the two sheets of glass so that the bottom sheet becomes the top sheet. The point here is to keep movements semi-random. You do not have to push too hard, nor too fast. Take your time.
IMPORTANT - make sure you do not grind the glass without switching the top and bottom pieces occasionally. IF you grind the whole thing with the same peice of glass always on top or bottom, you can possibly introduce a small curvature to the glass sheets, which may in turn affect your focusing. Keeping the same peice of glass on top or bottom is how telescope makers introduce a curve to thier mirrors they are grinding.
5) Keep grinding, washing, and examining untill you have both inside surfaces comepletely "frosted". Take some care not to get scratch the outside surface of the glass.
About 10 to 20 minutes for the actuall grinding, depending in various factors. It is possible to break a sheet of glass if you rush to quickly, push down to hard. It is hard to describe in print how hard to push, but imagine if you placed a one pound (500 gram) weight on top of both sheets of glass while pushing - that is a good place to start.
For drawing lines and other effect, see my notes farther on up in the main body of hte FAQ. The only other consideration I ahve is the idea of cutting off the corners of the glass. This sometimes can be usefull for checking out vignetting on some lenses, seeing if your lens hood is cutting off your lens, etc. Again, I find this is one of thsoe "Kodak vs Fuji" questions. The used grit is not toxic,a nd can be easily dumped on a gravel driveway or similar. (That is, untill some new study proves that Canadain rats have a 5% chance of increased risk of worsening acne while grinding telescope mirrors over a 75 year period.) Otherwise, good luck and enjoy.
Joe
If you have any further questions, comments, or are bored and wish to see if I actually answer my mail, please e-mail me at: joneil@multiboard.com Please also feel free to visit my large format photo gallery, somes pictures taken using my Bender.