| Author | Message | ||
     Dan Mitchell Rating: N/A |
What kind of cameras are you thinking about? Sometimes you can patch the old bellows and make it usable. Something like black silicone gasket stuff works well to plug holes in the corners. Use cloth tape to repair tears in the covering. For big holes, you may have to cut out a piece of replacement material and glue it in place. If there are a lot of pinhole leaks, the bellows is beyond repair and you have to make a new one. I've made replacement bellows for several medium format folders. It's tedious, but not really difficult. The two main problems are 1) getting good measurements from the old bellows, and 2) finding suitable material. Making the bellows is actually fairly easy. I have some notes I wrote up and can put them up on my website if you want the info. The same principles should work on large format camera bellows, but I've never tried making one myself. If you can find new old stock from a reapir shop, that's the easiest and cheapest way to go. You can try camerabellows.com as well to see what a new bellows would cost. Depending on the camera it may be less than you think. |