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It's like you read my mind, I'm midway through shooting my next video on shooting expired Ektar 25. I've been shooting a lot more close up b roll of using the camera than normal so people can see it in use in the field. Not sure when it will be finished as my film lab decided to move building over the holidays and aren't open till late Jan, but hopefully it should be done soon after that.

I'm currently 'testing' a third party supplier, seeing how the stack up, and if they are decent, I'll add a link. I just didn't want to recommend anyone without trying it first. In the meantime if people want to go on eBay/Etsy etc and order a custom set there are a few different options, I just don't feel comfortable recommending any yet .

Getting a bellows is not really that hard. You can get them from CustomBellows UK for reasonable prices. You can also order them from China, but I strongly, *strongly* recommend not doing that. Of the three I've tried from Chinese suppliers, two never showed up and one showed up incorrect dimensions. Custom Bellows UK was not drastically more expensive, was faster, and was exactly what I ordered.

@mapgeek6 thanks for the heads-up, will have to check them out

Will try to answer your rather detailed questions as best I can (links are for a common craft store here in Aus, I don't have international options sadly): 1. Inner Fabric: Plain Top Pop 112 cm Poplin Fabric Black 80% Polyester 20% Cotton 100 GSM (+/- 5%) www.spotlightstores.com/sewing-fabrics/diy-face-masks/plain-top-pop-112-cm-poplin-fabric/80072358 2. Outer Fabric: durable polyester and lined with a block-out thermal coating www.spotlightstores.com/curtains/curtain-fabrics/curtain-linings/langdon-3-pass-curtain-lining/BP80388677-black. 3. Ribs / Stiffeners: Canon Photo Paper Luster .26mm 260 GSM 4. Total Thickness: .5mm

Haa, oh trust me, I've been there, I've gone from 1 to 3 617 cameras in a very short period of time, it's like a drug. My medium format and 35mm cameras have been getting dusty. Enjoy the camera you have, the best part is, when it comes time to build one, you will have developed a bunch of knowledge about why you need a view camera, that's what happend to me.

Hi, yes I remember you mentioning that a few videos back, good to see you back here. Autodesk Fusion is free for personal use, for your needs you could literally get by without touching 99.9% of the program, there are plenty of TH-cam help videos, all you would need is 1. How to import STL files 2. How to measure Google those two terms and you can import a part and then choose any two points on it and you will get a dimension down to 3 decimal points, good enough for woodworking 😜 If youre keen, you could then also get Fusion to generate 1:1 scaled drawings of any part which you could use for the parts you want to make. From my limited knowledge of woodworking (high school shop class) most of the main body parts are effectively just assorted rectangles so they would all be easily manageable, the areas I think you may have issue producing in wood would be the rear film back, as there are multiple curves and the tolerances need to be far more precise, sub millimetre (to guarantee no light leaks) but a combination of 3d parts and wood working parts would be a pretty nice setup. If only I had the space for more tools.....and the knowledge . Hope that helps.

@ yes I would definitely print the film back. I will download Autodesk Fusion and play around with it to get a feel for how it works. Thanks for the pointers.

Hi, that's great. Totally understand, it took way longer than I thought it would when I started designing it 🤦🏻‍♂️ Without a doubt my most used lens, that my hit rate of shots I am happy with is my Fujinon W 135mm f5.6. Its a very reasonably priced lens, nice and sharp and suits the format really well. Good luck with the build, look forward to seeing the shots you get with it.

Thanks. I have a fresnel on my Chroma 617 but honestly I haven't missed it on the new camera.

@@thefilmlaundry The Shen Hao really needs it, the ground glass is good, but made to be quite robust and not exactly easy to focus through as a result, at least not for me. That's not to say I don't like it. The process of focussing just took a bit longer before I got the fresnel.

@careypridgeon i must admit my 90mm which is an f8 can be a tad dark at times, the 5.6 lenses are ok. Maybe I'll look into testing out a fresnel and see how much of a difference it makes when I get a chance

@@thefilmlaundry you could just lay the one from the chroma on top of the ground glass, rough side down, holding in place with tape for the moment.

From memory it's bonded into the ground glass, not easily removable sadly

Thanks. Hmmmm, you probably could stack up some 3mm pieces of MDF, basically all the rails and support structure could easily be made out of cutting 2 to 3 pieces of MDF on the laser and then gluing them together to get the thickness. Same with some parts of the rear standard. I think some of the brackets and smaller pieces would be hard as there is a lot of geometry that doesn't match up to the flat profile of a laser cut. That being said my knowledge of laser cutting is pretty limited.

@@thefilmlaundry Thanks for the reply.. I have done some other projects recently where I have laser cut either acrylic or mdf and stacked them together to create a really strong and rigid base, instead of 3d printing.. I have made a motorised Macro Rail and a copy stand using some of these parts and been really happy. For other parts do you recommend PLA or PETG? I have a Prusa MK4 and I think (with a new nozzle and bed) I can print Carbon Fibre, so might look at that.. Do you think you will ever do a build video of this kit? Thanks..

@moosekatdeluxe oh yes, I would think several layers bonded together would produce a very strong part. Can you put heatset inserts into acrylic? I suppose you could maybe hand tap the holes (that would be a lot of holes to hand tap though) I've been using PLA and had good success, except for the carbon fibre parts I did which are in PET CF. As long as you have a hardened nozzle and your extruder and bed can get hot enough you should be right, I did dry the filament for a day and kept it in a heated chamber during printing. But honestly it was easier than I expected. Yeah, there's an entire build video that comes with the kit, you can view it here if you want to see the entire process. www.thefilmlaundry.com/build-videos

@@thefilmlaundry excellent. Thanks for the link to the video. Sorry to keep asking questions but what are the dimensions of the biggest sized part that needs printing? My Prusa MK4's bed is 210 x 250mm. Just want to make sure I can print everything.

@moosekatdeluxe not a problem, the widest part is the film back plate. It is 260 wide, that one I had to print angled at a 45. I printed all the parts for the first version on an Anycubic Cobra Neo that has the same build plate dimensions. Some of the parts needed to be put on the plate at a 45 corner to corner to fit, but I was able to print them all. It did also require some of them to be printed standing up, which means a lot more supports, but they did print.

I do, although, it's been a bit neglected for a while since I built my own 3D printed Shen Hao 617. The colour issues I was having were all down to my home development, when I switched back to getting them developed at the lab all those problems disappeared. As for the light leaks, I ended up 3d printing two little light catches that I added to the top as well as some neoprene gasket and after that no more light leaks. I really should get my 617 out again, it really is the easiest of my 617 cameras to shoot.

@thefilmlaundry Thank you for that I have the 6:12 version, it's already been back to Chroma, but on the next test, it's still got light leaks and colour shifts on the colour film. I get all my films developed at the lab, so I cannot blame myself for dodgy development, but cannot understand where they are coming from, unless it's in the dark slide slot or lens cone attachment. Can't imagine it is the lens, even if it's old with old coating and not so good with flare as modern lens glass

@grahamhutton3129 interesting. By all means if you want to do me on Instagram and send me some examples I can have a look and see if anything stands out too me, lord knows I chased my tail for a while fixing the issues .

Sadly I sold my RB67 years ago, was just too big and bulky. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of projects already on TH-cam, it's a much easier build than the Hasselblad due to the size of the camera

It's definitely not something you can rush, sadly

Oh wow, that's terrible, I had great experiywith Heathrow, they even asked if I wanted to have my cameras hand checked but they weren't loaded so no need. Must be the luck of the drawer if you get a good person or not. Yours sounded like a total ass

Thanks 🙏🏻

Haaa, nah, this is well and truly just a holiday, I needed it before the 'something big' video I've been slaving away on for months drops hopefully just before Xmas 🤣

I'm glad you liked it. At first it was that I wanted to see if I could build a camera completely myself, building everything the design, the ground glass and the bellows. After I failed miserably three times and purchased a pre-made set the price was also a factor. When it came time to build the 617 camera, it was pretty much all about cost....and a small amount of me not liking to admit defeat 🤣 Actually material choice was the biggest hurdle, when I look at the pre-made set I got, they seem to have some extremely thin material that I have yet to find, the blind blockout fabric is good and does seem to be very tough, but the pre-made bellows are significantly thinner.

Ahhh, yes. I did have a section about this in my first edit, but it went on so long and so I decided to cut it, as it changes for every case. Basically, from what Wagner (the creator of the site for generating the plans) explained to me, you can't just set exact dimensions and expect the plans to always match, as it depends on a variety of measurements , ie changing one will impact another. Primarily the pleat width impacts the Fh and Fw as well as the Lh and Lw, originally I had Ft and Lt as the same as the pleats, 12mm which kept giving me and end width that was way wider by the factor of the plat width than I needed. I noticed that on an earlier plan, when I had set the Ft as a smaller number, it was able to generate a proper size, so basically I entered an ft as 5mm to make the end pleats small, then the width which was the entire width of the rear standard, and generated, it took a few goes, setting different final widths until I got a plan I was happy with, I then just added the length to the El to make up for the pleats I would not be using (ie the 5mm ones) as they would be too small to actually make. Hopefully that makes sense, Wagner is a great guy, if you have a specific needs, contact him as his level of knowledge on this is insane, way over my head 🤣

@@thefilmlaundryThat does make sense. I had wondered why you added the 5mm pleats and then just cut them off. Thanks for clearing that up.

Glad to be of help, yeah, when I needed to make my first set, I had to cobble together the process from about 5 different videos, each had some info but not the entire process

Glad it's helpful.

Hi, I should have an update on this for you in a few weeks, I'll keep you posted.

No such thing as a silly question. Unfortunately the Instax mechanism means the film is set back a few millimetres more than the Hasselblad film back, and there's no easy way of changing this without completely rebuilding the Instax part. The focussing screen on the Hasselblad is calibrated assuming the film will be a certain distance from the lens. However the Instax film is a few more millimetres back and so unless you shoot at f22 or higher and the depth of field covers that offset, you need to either get the film closer or adjust the focus screen to match the Instax. Hope that makes sense.

Thanks. Currently working on tidying up the 3d files, amazing the difference between, good enough for me, and good enough for wider release.

I've started planning the bellows video. As for the files, I'm going to try sending off the front and rear standards to be printed in carbon fibre, if they work out, then I'll go live with the files.

For the Aluminium order it worked out at $246 USD (I accidentally said the AUD price was USD in the video) I'm going to see how the PLA gears go, I did find a gear that looks like it should work on Ali Express but they didn't feel as smooth, not sure if their dimensions are off slightly or mine are. Either way the PLA is working now and feels really smooth to use so I'll stick with them until they fail 🤣

Haaa, well spotted. It's just a generic one but the top button fell off at some stage, rest of it still worked so I just grabbed a left over knob from my film plate build and glued it on, works great and actually feels a lot more solid to use than most shutter cables. I bought a replacement cable but it's just sitting in the bag as a safety for if this one breaks.

Part of me wanted to exactly replicate the Shen Hao but reality set in 🤣

Please, do provide the files, whether free, or for sale. I made your 617 half-plate back, it was a fun project that helped me put an old camera back in use. I would love to build this project also.

Honestly, all three options are viable. Why not offer the files and all the parts individually and let people choose what they want to make and what they want to buy? I’d want to buy all the hardware and make the wooden parts myself. I’d also want to have a go at making my own bellows. Selling your film cassette as a completely package also makes sense for someone without a 3D printer.

@kmcsmart interesting, you are going to make the base parts out of wood? Were you planning on doing this by hand or by CNC, only asked because the tolerances for a smooth focussing action are pretty tight. A part of my brain has considered buying a cheap CNC and trying my hand at making some of the parts in wood, but the mess, ohhhh the mess. Good point about the options though.

@@thefilmlaundry I’m a furniture maker so I’d love the challenge of doing it by hand but maybe like your bellows adventure I might end up throwing in the towel:) I regularly make my own plywood from layers of thin veneer using a vacuum press bag. I’d probably try something like that but a good handplane can also make a .001” shaving no problem. I have a full workshop so the mess would be fine with me.

I'm jealous, I'm building all this in an apartment 🤦🏻‍♂️ True, it's amazing how precise woodworking can be when you know what you are doing, I love watching New Yorkshire Workshops channel, his skills are insane.

Your lucky I didn't know that before, I would have hassled you for close up photos of the parts. There was a part of my brain that wanted to replicate them just because 🤦🏻‍♂️ Ohhhh, the 617 enlarger is definitely on my roadmap as I would love to print some of my shots, seems a shame to have all that resolution in the neg but not use it.

Haaaa, Ned says hi back. I doubt I'd hear anything, besides, then they would have to answer for the fact that their camera is a direct clone of the original Ebony 617 camera. In fact the Shen Hao shares more in common with the Ebony than mine does with the Shen Hao 🤣 The Mamiya is still on my list of projects, just not yet.

I was toying with the idea of selling this one seeing how much work i put into it. Was thinking three options. 1. Just the printable files, which means people would need to source their own hardware 2. The printable files as well as all the hardware needed to build it, is screws, thumbscrews, knobs and gears 3. A kit to build one, it would be all the parts printed, ready to assemble along with the hardware needed. Not sure what people would be interested in.

@@thefilmlaundry in my opinión the last two are the ones that have a good chance. At least i dont see the point of buying the printables without knowing what I need to put everything together :). Another option is to follow the Creative commons path. You can find several cameras under this registration (I can share some links if you want). Is free for personal use and (for me) the most attractive one considering the 3d printing comunity. Either way is a stunning work and I'm really looking forward to print It myself!

Haaa, ok I'll need a short while to build up the energy to go anywhere near bellows again, but I will make at some stage 🤣

Count me in too. Thanks

Seconded!

🤣

Hi Rolo. The great thing about 3d printing is you don't need a lot of tools, this camera was literally built in an apartment, with nothing more than a 3d printer and a few odd hand tools, nothing more complicated than a screw driver, hand drill and soldering iron.

Hi, for this one I was using the Fujinon W 135, it's a great lens, not expensive but extremely sharp, I also have the 210, 90 and 105 Fujinons. I find the 90 is generally too wide for most occassions hence why I picked up the 105 recently. But the 135 is without a doubt my favourite. It's not too wide but stills allows you to capture a decent wide scene, highly recommend it as a first lens.

Hi, the 3d models are available for free download on Thingiverse here www.thingiverse.com/thing:6625537 If you don't have a 3D printer there are many services online that will accept the files and print them for you extremely cheaply. When you get them if you have any questions putting them together feel free to shoot me a message and I'll do my best to help. Hope that helps.

@@thefilmlaundry ok I’ll have to see if I can find someone thank you.

Have a look at PCBWay, they are pretty coat effective and fast turnaround.

Haaaa, oh wow, that is a giant ask, rangefinders are notoriously complicated, and the spans lenses basically needed to be medium format lenses in the shape of 35mm camera lenses to get the required image circle to fill the frame. Honestly I'm surprised they ever made the camera at all. Will have to see, I'm half way through my next project will have a video when it's done, don't want to say anything yet, but it's well and truly the most complicated 3d modelling and printing I have ever done, but it's looking amazing

Interesting, I literally just sold off all my old dark room kit, mainly because it was taking up space but also, I couldn't print the larger negs...would probably need a custom enlarger lens....interesting.... Although I can neither confirm or deny that I am currently busy designing and building a fully 3d printed Shen hao TF617 from scratch 🤦🏻‍♂️

I think the plan is apartments and more shops 🤣

Glad you enjoyed it 🤦🏻‍♂️

It came out way better than I expected, once I figured out the process it's actuyquite simple. Hadn't really thought about doing a tutorial, I will pop the 3d models up on Thingaverse, if you are going to make one, by all means shoot me any questions you have, best to just DM me on Instagram @the_film_laundry

I think the general consensus is anything above 6 X 9 is large format, but hey, whatever works 🤷🏻‍♂️ it's like Fiji saying the GFX is medium format.

Look you probably could design and an entirely 3d printer back with the eject mechanism, however the tolerances for the little catch that pushes up the exposed frame only (without accidentally pushing up multiple sheets) as well as the rollers to provide proper spread of the developing chemicals would be quite complicated, it's possible, but way above my skill level. I do remember seeing a project where someone made a manual crank to advance the film out and a push button kind of lever at the base to start the film ejecting, but it had quite a few hiccups. And for my mind, even if you got it all working it would only work exactly like the film back, so no real benefit.....and I'm lazy 🤣

Hi, it depends on the camera and how it mounts the film plate, I don't think there is any standard like there is Graflock for 4 by 5, but it wouldn't be to hard to adjust the 3d model to fit other film backs as there is plenty of room with half plate cameras, did you have a specific one in mind, I can have a look and let you know. Appreciate it, has been a lot of fun to build and even more fun to use, 6:17 is an amazing format to shoot

Weird, didn't get anything, must have been eaten by the spam filter, best to DM me on my Insta, they always make it thriugh @the_film_laundry

Haaaaa, I apologise, no Hassies were hurt 🤣

“Instax has the dynamic range of a potato” “I’ve never really been into it” “This project is done. For my next project I will brush off my undergrad chemistry memories and try and formulate a new instant reversal process”

Haaa don't get me started, I have seriously been looking at all the work people have been doing to figure out how to develop Kodachroma again 🤦🏻‍♂️

@@thefilmlaundry 7 different exposure stages… surely that can be miniaturised into a wardrobe sized machine 😂 Some folks long for aerochrome; me gimme that damn beautiful K-14 - in 120.

But I think a more practical project would be seeing if you can miniaturise the rangefinder mechanism on a Mamiya Super23. Won’t ever get the whole thing down to a Mamiya7 size unit, but a 6x6, 6x7, 6x9 with interchangeable backs and some of those press lenses … that’s the dream…

Thanks, was definitely a bit of fun to build.

Hmmmm, interesting. Doing it mid roll does add a bit of extra complexity, but I can't see why a mask made of the same spring steel as the Darkside (painted black of course) couldn't be made to insert in the camera side of the film plate, there a few mm of room there and the spring steel is very thin, then you would just need to adjust what you frame up in the ground glass (although that's easy with added guidelines. Honestly the biggest complication would probably be in keeping what frames you need to wind on too right in your head. I'm just finishing up building a Polaroid back for a Hasselblad, I'll have a bit of a look at this problem once that's done. Glad you enjoyed the build.

@@thefilmlaundry yes, it does add complexity to the workflow, and you’d have to either sacrifice a bit of film on the change over, or make decision which mask you’re using next before winding on. there is some real beauty in the Fuji/voigtlander 66/67 with the internal switch (only accessible when film is out) which just moves each side in or out 5mm; it also changes the wind stop - but they opted for a knob rather than winding lever for that and it’s the biggest complaint most folk have about that camera. But… up-scaling a single 5mm each side move to graduations totalling 40mm each side to get from 6x9 to 6x17 and doing it intra roll, with automatic winder limitations would be quite the challenge… Good luck with the Polaroid back!

Would also need multiple red windows - just for extra fun confusion… which some shenhao have, but still…

Not really, due to the lack of backing paper on 220 and this also frame numbers (which you need to know you have wound the film on enough for each frame) it would t really work. I suppose you could tape up the frame window and figure out how many turns of the film winding knob you need to do for each shit, but it would be pretty hit or miss. Best to stick to 120 film.

It's a great way to get into 617. The Fresnal lens is an option when you order the camera, it was an extra $80 from memory.

Not a problem. Seemed silly to put all that effort in and then keep it to myself. Yeah, have to admit, for no other reason than wondering if I can I have started seriously considering it. Not a once piece like the Chroma, more I'd like to see if I can replicate a Shen Hao completely with all the movements.