Going classic... waaaay classic

[denishr]

OT, but it's a continuation of my earlier thread about vintage glass...

With the help of our Pherdinand, I recently acquired some vintage MF lenses, mostly taken off old folders... All with the shutters working!

Among them was a real gem - an ancient brass lens, marked "Adolf Fischl Jr., Berlin".

It turned to be too long in focal length to mont on my 2x3 Pacemaker Speed Graphic, so I had to resort to some ingenuity - I just added a close-up lens (a Zeiss Proxar) to "shorten" it.

So far, the image on the ground glass looks very promising - unfortunately, I'm rather busy these days, and on top of that, the weather is rather poor...

So, for the time being, I'll just attach a quick digisnap of the kit...

Soon I'll be able to see what photos I can get from it - too good for my original purpose, I guess..... 😀

Denis

 

[Solinar]

Is that a digital camera? :angel:

 

[denishr]

Well, I suppose i could attach some kind of digital back to it, but I don't see the point... 😉

 

[Pherdinand]

Way to go, Denis🙂 Looks cute, with that cardboard(wooden?) lens board 😀
How did the stuff clean up?
You really can't rack that graflex bellows out far enuff? hmmm.

 

[denishr]

Way to go, Denis🙂 Looks cute, with that cardboard(wooden?) lens board 😀
How did the stuff clean up?
You really can't rack that graflex bellows out far enuff? hmmm.

Pherdi, that's a "quick-and-dirty" cardboard lensboard... You gotta love those Speed Graphics 😀

All of the lenses cleaned up nice, all shutters are working... Those extra lens elements might be used for some other mad project in the future 😉

As for the bellows, I can rack them out to infinity with that lens, but not much closer. For closer shots (1-3 meters) I need to use close-up lens. I think that brass lens is something like 210mm focal length. I bet Gordon Coale cold use it just nice on his 4x5 (or is it 3x4?) Speed...

However, I'm waiting for the weather to clear up, and will do some test shots soon...

And as for that brass lens - kind of strange.... Holding (and hopefully using!) something that's over 100 years old, and can still produce (nice) photos.... Wow!

But, I need something "worse" - one of the other lens looks like a good candidate - sharp(ish) center, with horrible aberrations and distortions as you move off the center 😀

Denis

 

[Pherdinand]

I seem to recall some discussion on the PN classic camera forum, when a guy by accident put the inner element of a triplet backwards back into his mf folder, after cleaning. He got a sharp center and a very fast image degradation towards the edges of the 6x6 frame. Something you could try as well.

 

[denishr]

Thanks for the idea, Pherdi! - I'll try that, too 🙂

Denis

 

[Stu :)]

Brilliant Denis, hats off to you!

I'm currently working on a home brew Arch/Flex Body to make use to the odd ball MF/LF lenses that show on our local auction site. I am really looking forward to have a 6x6 camera with movements...

Stu 🙂