gowland aerial 4x5 lens

[jp]

I have had a Gowland 4x5 Aerial Standard for a while with no lens. It's pretty cool, but I'd like to be able to use it, thus a need to hunt for a lens for it.

Basically, what was the original lens for this camera?

This is the camera from Peter Gowland's site:



The focus is fixed, so it's important to pick a lens with the right flange-film distance. I can make a shim if it's close but can't do anything if the film-flange distance for the lens is too short. I have measured about 138.25mm depth from the lens board front to the glass with my cheap chinese digital micrometer/depth gauge. The lens hole is about 43mm in diameter as best as I could estimate as it's recessed and the fingers on my caliper were not long enough to measure something that recessed.

According to
http://www.cameraeccentric.com/html/...enstock_3.html The 150mm APO-Sironar-N is pretty close (142mm flange distance and 42mm diameter) and has some visual similarities to the lens in the Gowland photo, the white lever with the dark triangle in it. The Symmars seem to have a dark lever with a triangle in it. The rodenstock also has the unpainted knurled lever slightly ccw from the pc flash sync. Any clues or suggestions are appreciated!

[John Schneider]

Fyi, Ebony has a nice chart of ffd's here: http://www.ebonycamera.com/articles/lenses.html

[Ash]

You could buy a focus helical from the auction site. It takes about a month to arrive from HK, but might give you more use from the camera

[Oren Grad]

For the 8x10 Aerial, Peter always used to mention the 300 Nikkor M, because it's so small and light. But I don't recall that he favored any particular lens for the 4x5 version. Anything that covers and that can be conveniently shimmed for the camera's flange-to-film should be fine.

Ash has an interesting point - if you don't mind using, say, a 180, you'd have room for a focusing helical.

[jp]

Thanks for the link to the nice chart of ffds!

I'll think about the focus helical; I've seen the auction for that. On one hand, it's one more thing to get messed up when flying and me not noticing. On the other hand, the ability to focus might provide some other uses for the camera.