Mounting Gem Lenses?

[Mark Sawyer]

You know, the old lenses in straight, simple barrels... I just bore a fairly snug hole in a lensboard and wrap a few rubber bands around the lens front and rear. Non-destructive and it works, but ugly to the point of embarrassment! Has anyone come up with an elegant solution?

[Gem Singer]

Mark,

I was un-aware that there were lenses named after me.

[Steven Tribe]

Gem (both for lenses and picture type) was in use as early as the 1860's - so just before your time Gem!

[patrickjames]

I typically find a flange that is just a little bigger than the barrel and then wrap the barrel with just a thin line of gaffers tape and screw the lens in. This works well and looks pretty clean.

[leighmarrin]

I've got an unmarked 7" Gem petzval and have mounted it in another inelegant way not mentioned. I also own a 360mm/f5.5 Tele-Xenar in a Compound shutter, so I removed the Tele-Xenar's front and rear cells, leaving only the barrel. I wrapped a little tape around one end of the petzval, and then put it inside the empty barrel. The Xenar barrel is tapered, so I wound about six feet of bootlace around the petzval to fill in the empty space inside the barrel, centered the lens by eye, and wrapped the mouth of the barrel with a bunch of electrical tape.

Klugey? YES! But it worked OK and gave me flash synch and shutter speeds up to 1/100th. As this Compound shutter has identical threads front and back, you can also put the barrel/petzval combo inside the body of the camera.

And don't forget that the threaded end of a Gem petzval is the front cemented doublet.