75mm Nikkor enlarging lens on 8x10?

[duckarrowtypes]

I'm itching to make some daguerreotypes of small objects but I don't have anything on my 8x10 Black Beast Calumet except a 14" lens. I've been reading about using enlarging lenses for the purpose of magnification photography. What can I expect?

I found a 75mm Nikkor enlarging lens on the 'ol Beseler and I think that I'll try to rig it up to a lens board tomorrow. Has anyone done something like this before? What sort of image do you think I'll get on the glass?

By the way, I know that I won't have a shutter but since my exposures are in the minutes, I won't be needing one.

-J

[Dan Fromm]

It should work fairly well. Reverse it to preserve its corrections.

At infinity that lens will cover ~ 80 mm. Should cover 300 mm from around 4:1 up. The view will be a little dim, but focusing with the lens wide open -- move the camera or subject -- shouldn't be too hard because the plane of best focus will be paper thin. BTW, at those magnifications there's little benefit from stopping down. Losses to diffraction swamp gains of DoF from stopping down.

Good luck, have fun,

Dan

[duckarrowtypes]

Believe it or not, I found a lens board for the beast in my attic that fit the EL-Nikkor perfectly. The results, however, are poor.

No matter which way I mount the lens (normal or reversed), the focal distance is so short that I can't even get the rear element onto the rails. I have to keep the rear element as close as possible to the front in order to get anything in focus at all.

Once I get something into focus, the camera is so prohibitively close to the subject that I couldn't hope to light it.

Another thing I noticed is that even when it was in focus, there didn't seem to be any magnification. The most I could get was maybe 1:1.

I need another option... what else should I try for some 1:1 and magnification work?

-J

[duckarrowtypes]

I think that I'm going to order one of the spiffy Nikkor Macro 120mm lenses that B&H has on sale. I know that I can't cover 8x10 with it but I could make some great 4x5 and 5x7" daguerreotypes that way.

[Dan Fromm]

Believe it or not, I found a lens board for the beast in my attic that fit the EL-Nikkor perfectly. The results, however, are poor.

No matter which way I mount the lens (normal or reversed), the focal distance is so short that I can't even get the rear element onto the rails. I have to keep the rear element as close as possible to the front in order to get anything in focus at all.

Once I get something into focus, the camera is so prohibitively close to the subject that I couldn't hope to light it.

Another thing I noticed is that even when it was in focus, there didn't seem to be any magnification. The most I could get was maybe 1:1.

I need another option... what else should I try for some 1:1 and magnification work?

-JNot to be impolite, but what you say makes little sense. I'm not sure you understand what you're doing. So, have a couple of magic formulas. And understand that shooting at high magnification is usually done on a copy stand or the equivalent.

Subject-facing node-to-subject distance = f (1 + m)/m, where f = lens' focal length and m = magnification. Exactly where a lens' nodes are varies from design to design, for the lenses commonly used for enlarging or as LF taking lenses they are both close to the diaphragm.

Film-facing node-to-film distance = f*(m + 1).

I can't speak for others' practice, but I set up the camera with a tape measure to get the desired magnification and then position it (or the subject, depending on the situation) to focus. Try that now that you can calculate the extension needed to get the magnification.

If you want to use a short lens, it has to be close to the subject. If you want the lens to be far from the subject you have to use a long lens, and then getting the magnification can require considerable extension.

What are these elements you're having problems with? Do you mean the camera's standards or the lens' glasses?

By all means get a 120 Macro Nikkor. If I had the spare cash I'd get one. From a little below 2:1 up it will cover 8x10. But 120 mm isn't that much longer than 75 mm so you'll have the same headaches.

Thinking of headaches, I just can't see your problem. FWIW I shoot up to slightly above 2:1 with a 100 mm lens, have no lighting problems at all. I have other headaches, but not the ones that you report. Think harder about lighting, what works for portraiture isn't best closeup.

Oh, yeah, before you waste more time and make your head hurt more, buy a copy of Lester Lefkowitz' book The Manual of Closeup Photography. Short messages on a bulletin board aren't adequate substitutes for a good book.

Good luck, have fun,

Dan

[duckarrowtypes]

I'll check out that book, thanks for the tip. You're right, by the way... I don't know what I'm doing! I'll try to clarify.

With the 75mm Nikkor mounted in either orientation, the only way I can get anything in focus is if the rear standard is as close to the lens as is possible on my camera. I don't have any bellows draw whatsoever. Even if I reverse the lens (I'm literally unscrewing it and mounting it backwards inside the bellows), I get nearly an identical result. That confuses me greatly.

Now I'm worried about getting this 120mm!

edit: Maybe I'm not "reversing" the lens properly. To mount the lens in the normal fashion, I slide the threaded area through a Copal 1 hole and then lock it down with the retaining ring. When I say that I "reverse" the lens, I'm reversing the whole procedure so that the lens barrel is now inside the bellows instead of sticking out. I'm assuming that this is wrong.

[duckarrowtypes]

EUREKA!

I was thinking that I'd get results in the 1:1 range. What I didn't expect is that I have a bloody MICROSCOPE in my workshop now! The reason that I couldn't get anything in focus was that I wasn't expecting such a huge degree of enlargement. I could easily make my house key fill the entire 8x10" ground glass.

Wow!

[Dan Fromm]

edit: Maybe I'm not "reversing" the lens properly. To mount the lens in the normal fashion, I slide the threaded area through a Copal 1 hole and then lock it down with the retaining ring. When I say that I "reverse" the lens, I'm reversing the whole procedure so that the lens barrel is now inside the bellows instead of sticking out. I'm assuming that this is wrong.Not wrong, but awfully clumsy. Older El Nikkors are double-ended, with mounting threads at each end; one set of mounting threads is covered by a removable trim ring. Nikon sold, may still sell, a reverse mounting adapter for newer El Nikkors.

You may want to look into the Tominon macro lenses made for the Polaroid MP-4 system. These are in barrel, screw into the front of a #1 shutter. The MP-4 uses a Copal #1 press without shutter. Anyway, lenses for the MP-4 are designed to be used above 1:1 mounted that way. Not too expensive ...

Re your discovery. Do the arithmetic. At 1:1, diaphragm-to-film distance is roughly 2f, in your case 150 mm.

Good luck, continue having fun,

Dan