Lens I am not familiar with..

[Dave Parker]

Well, I went into a second hand store here locally on Saturday and ended up buying a $25 box of photo junk(stuff) included was a lens I am not familiar with, it says Astron 105mm f/4.5 it is a barrel lens mounted in what appears to be a copal shutter, although there is a mylar sticker over the normally engraved shutter name, I pulled the mylar sticker off and the original name of the shutter has been scratch off and replaced with the sticker which reads camtron, I of course presume this is an enlarger lens that has been mounted in the shutter, but I am not familiar with this lens brand, anybody able to point me in the right direction to find out if good, bad or indifferent, also, without not knowing anything about it, I am wondering if it will cover 4x5?

Thanks for any help.

Dave

[Jim Galli]

Dave, lots of this stuff was used in the mid 70's for oscilloscope type Polaroid applications. That'd be my guess. A 4.5 105mm is almost always a tessar type. It won't quite cover 4X5 at infinity but for CRT applications they were at 1.5:1 or so and would cover the Polaroid Pack film sizes fine.

[Dan Fromm]

Dave, why don't you ask the lens what it is? Count reflections, and if it is a tessar type (4 strong reflections, no weak ones in front of the diaphragm; two strong, one weak and perhaps hard to see, behind) then you know it won't cover 4x5 at infinity.

Cheers,

Dan

[Dave Parker]

Thanks Guys.

Dave

[Maris Rusis]

I have an Astron 150/4.5 and it is definitely a Tessar type enlarging lens. At enlargements up to 4x, aperture at f.8, sharpness, contrast, and flare are OK.