Graflex super D Lenses

[holms1975]

Hi everyone
I have layed my eye on Graflex Super D SLR camera, and I have a question, what is the widest lens that could be used with this camera,?
As far as I understand it comes with its standard 190mm lens, so The question is, can I use like 127mm or 135mm lens with this camera?
Thanks

[Sevo]

Hi everyone
I have layed my eye on Graflex Super D SLR camera, and I have a question, what is the widest lens that could be used with this camera,?
As far as I understand it comes with its standard 190mm lens, so The question is, can I use like 127mm or 135mm lens with this camera?
Thanks

No. Due to the absence of LF retrofocal lenses, or indeed even asymmetric lenses with mildly more mirror clearance than focal length, you cannot even fit focal lengths we'd usually consider "normal" for 4x5" - the shortest possible lens is that 190mm (or, beyond the original lenses, perhaps some very slow and hence small 180mm lens). If you look past Graflex, to European makers between the wars, there were a few non-rotating, fixed-landscape LF SLRs that can fit slightly wider lenses due to their shorter build, up to 150mm for 4x5" (or 10x15cm), up to 135mm for 9x12cm versions, but even these would not be wide, but the definition of "normal" in non-SLR terms.

[Mark Sawyer]

If you retract the bellows back as far as possible and measure from the film plane to the lens board, that will tell you about how short a lens it will take. As Sevo said, it won't be very short as there needs to be room for the mirror to go up and down. Keep in mind you'll lose the automatic aperture close-down feature of the Super-D with anything other than the 190mm lens.

[Maris Rusis]

You can get a wide view without changing back focal length by fitting an afocal auxiliary lens to the front of the normal lens. The are lots of possibilities on the market all the way out to fish-eye effects. Optical quality? In my experience not all that bad at small apertures if you don't mind a bit of distortion.

[Otto Seaman]

This could soak you for a few pennies:

http://marktucker.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/homemade/

[Sevo]

You can get a wide view without changing back focal length by fitting an afocal auxiliary lens to the front of the normal lens. The are lots of possibilities on the market all the way out to fish-eye effects.

Bear in mind that LF SLRs tend do start somewhat long, so the effect of these lenses will be somewhat less than what people experience on small format SLRs or compacts, where it adds to a already wide focal length - a 1.5x focal reducer (about as wild as it gets short of fisheyes) will make the 190mm a modest 127mm.