I am considering a Tachihara viewing screen for my 4x5 Zone VI. The Tachihara is a little too big. Can the material be easily trimmed to fit?

-- joe zarick (jza1058168@aol.com), November 28, 2001

Answers

Hi Joe. I don't have the two cameras in front of me in the office, but the short answers are: (1) yes, you can trim the plastic fresnel material without any great trouble. (Though the earlier suggestions about the $4 fresnels from Barnes & Noble would probably be cheaper.) A small pair of shears would do this nicely. I've always thought the Tachihara set up was pretty nice for such an inexpensive camera (2) you have to be careful that you don't accidentally move the ground glass that the image is focussed on from the original position in the design of the Zone VI. If it moves, then that will cause the actual plane of focus to be in front of or behind what you intended. If you make this undesirable change, stopping down can mask it for quite some time until the day you shoot wider open and discover things are off. I'm concerned because I remember the Zone VI fresnel being turned ribs out, with the fresnel being the furthest thing back from the lens. I think the Tachihara has the fresnel further forward, covered with clear plastic with that little circle in the middle. Make sure the change over doesn't move the ground glass. I'm sure Calument would be happy to sell you a fresnel made for the Zone VI, you can check the cost of that on their web site.

-- Kevin Crisp (KRCrisp@aol.com), November 28, 2001.

As the material is plastic, if you have less then a few mm to trim I think it would work better to use an emory paper and good flat surface to grind it down rather than try to cut it. ...Careful about messing up the GG surface: I would try to avoid touching it at all and carefully clean it when you are done.

-- Gary Frost (gary.frost@onemain.com), November 29, 2001.