Ensign Ranger

[A G Photography]

I bought this folder out of curiosity pretty cheap from eBay. I never used an english folder and I expected pretty low quality.



Damn I was wrong!

Despite being the "cheapest" model of the Ensign folders it delivers the goods in a very personal way:



More on my blog http://foodografia.blogspot.com/2009/04/ensign-ranger-folder-love.html

[LucisPictor]

Nice! Folders can be fun, can't they?

[A G Photography]

[Esox lucius]

100mm on medium format and closest focusing about 1m. That sounds great.

I find the 80mm Tessar fabulous for landscapes when stopped down to f/8 or f/11, but with the 1.5m near focusing limit and wider FoV it's a different use for it.

[F16SUNSHINE]

Excellent result!

Congrats Alesandro. How cheap was cheap?

[A G Photography]

[GrahamNR17]

One of the things that brings me to this site is stunning photography I see from what other people consider crappy old cameras (well, apart from the rich men here with Leicas - and Atila who has every lens in the world )

I think you have proved that a camera in the right hands can deliver photos of great beauty. I am already awe struck by your photography, but this time the camera has really shocked me.

Congratulations on this camera, what a thrill you must have had when you saw the results. And congratulations on your photography, you really have a good eye

[Attila]

Very nice samples and great looking camera!
6x9 is 6x9 if you ever tried you don't want to shoot anymore on other medium!

Yeah. I have many lenses but I wan't more LOL, I have to sell them and buy new ones

[scsambrook]

[quote="A G Photography"]I bought this folder out of curiosity pretty cheap from eBay. I never used an english folder and I expected pretty low quality.

Hey there! That's a really nice picture, but what's wrong with our English (=British) folders ? Why expect low quality? Ross-Ensign made some top-quality cameras and lenses - even their Ful-Vue Super box camera was a class act (my first camera-!!!). The weak link in British folders was the lack of a really good but inexpensive shutter, which is why yours has a Gauthier model.

What's the lens on it? Can't quite make it out from your photo.

[A G Photography]

[rawhead]

I just went through the first roll in my Bower-X (and took a shot at my very first self-developing , and I am quite impressed with the Schneider-Kreuznach Radionar 105mm f4.5. Especially for a cam that I got for $10 Despite the fact that I shot through the roll thinking it was 6x6, hence getting so much overlap that the usable portions were more like 645



This lens also focuses to 3.5ft (or even closer, since the focus ring turns even farther than the 3.5ft mark).


But like someone said, it makes it hard without even a rangefinder; what do people do?

Do you just always try to shoot using hyperfocal? Or, should I carry around a tape measure?


I consider myself lucky that I pretty much nailed the focus on the leaf at the lower left in this pic:






But portions of this tree went outside the DoF, unfortunately.








I like that bokeh of the first shot, so I'd like to shoot at wide open close-up shots when possible. I guess another thing I could do is to do distance measurement using a DSLR...

[estudleon]

Perhaps could be a good idea to new topic: tips to buy a folder cam.

It seems that a lot of members who knows about that.

Rino.

[F16SUNSHINE]

[rawhead]

[Attila]

[A G Photography]

[rawhead]

Hmm, I see how that could work. I have a Kodak Retina IIa that has a well calibrated range finder (at least, the rangefinder and the focus is well-calibrated; don't know if the indicated distance is accurate). Definitely a way to save money, if not necessary effort.


I guess I'll go out and shoot an entire roll wide open at various (but close) distances using that method and check the accuracy. Thanks Attila & A G !

[F16SUNSHINE]

Hey, I will check my spare box.
If there is a shoe mount RF in there you can have it for the post cost.

[rawhead]