It, beautiful

Too heavy Poor design om front standard

I purchased a beautiful Zone VI 8x10 with the gold plated hardware before they brought us the "new and improved" (translate: cheaper to make) model with the anodized black hardware. I purchased this camera to mainly use with the 4x5 back and mounted with the Nikkor T lens with the 600, 800 or the whopping 1200mm lens. I tried to get moon shots with the 1200 and had one major problem - it would go like this. 1. find the moon and frame in the 4x5 viewfinder (no easy task) 2. Loosen the knobs to raise or lower (moonrise or moonset) the lensboard - FLOP there it goes, you've lost everything because when you loosen the heavy lens flops over. With my Tachihara 4x5 I loosen the knob and the lens can only go up or down, not flop over because the lensboard holder section rides in grooves - in otherwords, you can have a foward tilt set and then raise or lower the lens without changing the tilt you had set. With the Zone VI, if you loosen to raise or lower the lens (as I had to do with the Moon shots) --- YOU LOOSE YOUR TILT SETTING!! - so as far as I'm concerned the Zone VI is a piece of beautiful junk. If anyone is interested and likes this camera it is for sale because I just bought a 8x10 Tachihara. I was never able to get a shot of the Moon with the 1200mm lens - never after many trys. It's a beautiful camera and would look great sitting on the mantle if anyone wants it because I don't have a fireplace.

Similar Products Used:

Wisner 4x5 (similiar problem except it has a tiny bump out that will keep the alignment if it is a light lens. Kodak 2D Tachihara -

Beautiful to look at and use. Rigid platform. Well designed and constructed.

Heavy. Can run off the rails if you're not careful.

The camera is aesthetically beautiful, well put together and well designed. It is a heavy camera but this makes for a stable platform in all but the windiest of conditions. It is easy to use and easy to fold once you get hang of it. I have the 4x5 reducing back which works well but doesn’t allow the use of wide angle lenses, 75mm won’t focus with the reducing back. I use a 120mm but a 90mm might just about focus on infinity. But then the camera wasn’t designed with this in mind. Very few complaints. If you are focusing at the limits of the camera there are no stops to prevent you coming off the rail, but that only happens once in a blue moon.

Customer Service

In the UK poor as Calumet no longer stock. Otherwise good, but you have to contact Calumet in the US.

Similar Products Used:

Old Calumet 8x10