What to make of this Ebay Item

Oh my! if that's a 120, Polaroid or 4x5 -back, it would make a nice round image because the lens is probably too small to cover a big negative.

Maybe it's a MEGA macro bellow... 😀
 
shadowfox said:
Oh my! if that's a 120, Polaroid or 4x5 -back, it would make a nice round image because the lens is probably too small to cover a big negative.
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The lens looks like an enlarging lens. Focusing appears to be done with the rails at the bottom. I'm not sure if they used the FED for anything more than a lens mount plus shutter.

Philipp
 
rxmd said:
The lens looks like an enlarging lens. Focusing appears to be done with the rails at the bottom. I'm not sure if they used the FED for anything more than a lens mount plus shutter.

Philipp
Click to expand...

Ah, I see, wouldn't it be cheaper or easier to find a real bellow mounted shutter/lens assembly...? 🙂

That's a *lot* of machine work just so you can put a Fed where it doesn't belong...
 
TVphotog said:
I just keep thinking... WHY??????
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Ah, the good old technician's categorial imperative. I am under the impression that this, on the other hand, is a case of tinkerer's categorial imperative ("WHY NOT???"). 🙂

Maybe they had the parts lying around from something else and just put the FED in front to use an enlarging lens with a shutter - saves you the hassle of getting lenses with built-in shutters.
 
Simple enuff. The lens does not appear to have a focussing scale and stops down to f45. Ergo, one can conclude it is a large format lens. The FED is merely serving as a shutter. I did a similar stunt mounting a Zorki-6 on a spare Graflex lensboard. The I-50 served for macro and a 150mm f4.5 M39 enlarging lens served as a normal.The other lens was a 10" f8 rapid rectilinear off a Thornton Pickard with an LTM converter. Thornton Pickards and the like used a curtain shutter behind the lens.

It is possible that this contraption is not as unusual as one might think. I have seen plenty of FSU large format cameras on eBay, none with a built-in shutter. I have seen plenty of FSU large format lenses, all sans shutter. I have never seen an FSU shutter.
This is the first FSU large format camera I have seen that is complete and ready to take pictures.
 
Hey, they did get one thing right - it is RARE. In fact, it's probably one of a kind. Since about 80% of the evil-bay ads for FSU cameras call them 'rare', sombody probably decided it was time to tell the truth. 😀
 
My guess is that this was used by a street photographer before Polaroid film (you know the type that gave you the photo in a few moments), ergo the neck strap. This would use printing out paper instead of film. The maker has all the optics and focus tricked out and appears to use a roll film back (with no means to advance roll film so MF was not used) as a slide holder and mask to insert the paper "film".

Michael
 
The seller swore that it's MF film, but I'll get back to you on that, once i actually hold it in my hands...

Yea the super-optimist was a totally home-made camera. I really doubt it was even a prototype...
 
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