CCHarrison
13-Jan-2012, 17:54
From a previous post (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=84840&page=3)..... and to continue....
To cheaply mimic a Pinkham and Smith wide open......open up those old landscape lenses !
Buy a Scovill Waterbury lens for your given format - these are f/15 lenses at their largest stop... Remove the glass (unscrews easily out the back)...remove the waterhouse wheel (held by a simple screw), find a wooden dowel/rod to place flush and firmly against the soldered metal aperture plate that remains in front of the lens - and firmly hit the dowel to punch out that ring, leaving you with a wide open lens barrel. Replace glass. You now have a Waterbury Soft Focus lens fixed at f/6. There are variations to this procedure. You can remove the waterhouse wheel and just drill a much larger aperture in the fixed, metal plate aperture that remains, perhaps leaving a very small edge around the perimeter for an f/9 or so lens...this would make the lens a bit less fuzzy than f/6, but perhaps more to your liking. These lenses sell for $ 100-250 fairly regularly on ebay....
An even simpler but much harder to locate option is to look for an early 1880's Nickel lens by Rochester Optical. These simple landscape lenses ("Single View Lens") were sold with a set of stops that were inserted in a slot based around the lens rim. In this case, no need for any modification - just dont use the stops. Voila, you have an f/5.6 lens thats going to have lots of Soft Focus character.... However, these are hard to find...they were only made a few years, about 1884-1886. But, I did just pick one up in 4x5 size on ebay for $ 139...
I recently posted about a little experiment I did with yet another small brass landscape lens that is built with one fixed stop at f/16....but the front unit containing the stop easily unscrews to make the lens about f/7. I was out X-Mas day with this lens and shot my inflatable Santa....
These are but 3 examples to get to Soft Focus land for cheap dollars. I hate to see an antique lens potentially get "altered," but if you want to experiement with Large Format Soft Focus and dont want to chat about paying $ 4K for a Pinkham or other sky high prices for these once forgotten about SF lenses..... be creative... there are lots of brass lenses out there that can be altered to try Soft Focus - well, at least one type of Soft Focus.
Best,
Dan
To cheaply mimic a Pinkham and Smith wide open......open up those old landscape lenses !
Buy a Scovill Waterbury lens for your given format - these are f/15 lenses at their largest stop... Remove the glass (unscrews easily out the back)...remove the waterhouse wheel (held by a simple screw), find a wooden dowel/rod to place flush and firmly against the soldered metal aperture plate that remains in front of the lens - and firmly hit the dowel to punch out that ring, leaving you with a wide open lens barrel. Replace glass. You now have a Waterbury Soft Focus lens fixed at f/6. There are variations to this procedure. You can remove the waterhouse wheel and just drill a much larger aperture in the fixed, metal plate aperture that remains, perhaps leaving a very small edge around the perimeter for an f/9 or so lens...this would make the lens a bit less fuzzy than f/6, but perhaps more to your liking. These lenses sell for $ 100-250 fairly regularly on ebay....
An even simpler but much harder to locate option is to look for an early 1880's Nickel lens by Rochester Optical. These simple landscape lenses ("Single View Lens") were sold with a set of stops that were inserted in a slot based around the lens rim. In this case, no need for any modification - just dont use the stops. Voila, you have an f/5.6 lens thats going to have lots of Soft Focus character.... However, these are hard to find...they were only made a few years, about 1884-1886. But, I did just pick one up in 4x5 size on ebay for $ 139...
I recently posted about a little experiment I did with yet another small brass landscape lens that is built with one fixed stop at f/16....but the front unit containing the stop easily unscrews to make the lens about f/7. I was out X-Mas day with this lens and shot my inflatable Santa....
These are but 3 examples to get to Soft Focus land for cheap dollars. I hate to see an antique lens potentially get "altered," but if you want to experiement with Large Format Soft Focus and dont want to chat about paying $ 4K for a Pinkham or other sky high prices for these once forgotten about SF lenses..... be creative... there are lots of brass lenses out there that can be altered to try Soft Focus - well, at least one type of Soft Focus.
Best,
Dan