I've seen some antique brass lenses..
1) I've seen some photo's posted in here with strange lenses that have a unique kind of look... I guessing these lenses being not very well corrected should be quite interesting?
2) They ones I have seen dont seem to have any kind of aperture setting or shutter.. how do I make them work on my Tachihara?
Daniel.
1) some of the antique brass lenses are so well corrected that the images are indistinguishable from pictures shot with modern lenses.
2) All of mine have some sort of aperture - iris, wheel-stops or Waterhouse stops. That last is a set of thin metal sheets with different size holes in them, which you put in a slot in the lens barrel.
For a shutter I often use a hat. That necessitates slow film, small apertures or poor light - either one or all. There are also shutters made for mounting behind the lens board or in front of the lens, which cam be used with a bit more precision than hats or lens caps.
And then there are cameras with built-in shutters too - the most common one is the Speed Graphic. Mine has a small iris universal lens mount on a lens board, so I can pop any small brass lens on it without needing a whole stack of special lens boards.
Last edited by Ole Tjugen; 15-Mar-2007 at 06:16. Reason: Spellling
Can you buy a lens board with a shutter/universal lens mount which would enable me to use all of these?Originally Posted by Ole Tjugen
Daniel.
The best way is to sort of dedicate a camera to the lenses. I've had most of my successes with a Kodak 2D that has a Packard shutter built into the camera. That way any barrel lens I put up front can at least have the different possibilities that the Packard shutter is capable of. It can fire from about 1/25 on down to whatever you want. Still with a big aperture portrait lens outdoors the meter can call for up to 1/250th on my 100 asa film. When that happens I do about a 1 1/2 stop pull in PyroCat HD. I'll be selling a 5X7 2D after this weekend. Focused on "Shooting the West" in Winnemucca just now though.
I have actually seen one for sale on ebay, but it's easier to assemble all the parts separately. Well - "easy" is wrong. The iris lens mounts are fairly uncommon, and are getting ridiculously expensive for a 80+ years old piece of hardware. Finding one small enough for a Speed Graphic lens board is so difficult that I didn't believe they existed until I found one in a box of "miscellaneous camera parts and bits and pieces".
The only exception to note is with regard to flare. Antique brass (and many "older") lenses will be uncoated and more prone to flare given flare-producing lighting conditions.
...how do I make them work on my Tachihara?
How indeed...
Each lens is its own size. Many are not mounted in a shutter. Some don't even have a diaphragm.
The labor, for mounting them in a shutter, can exceed the price of the lens. Finding a shutter of the right size can also be a challenge, and it may cost more than the lens and labor combined.
Since having a round opening seems to be a key element in nice bokeh, many shoot wide open, or benefit from the fact that older diaphragms had many blades, like 19 or more. With modern film, you may need to control brightness via neutral density filters.
So try to find a lens already in a shutter. And then, all you have to do is mount it onto a Technika style board.
Just make sure that the lens + shutter it isn't too heavy for the Tachi. Some of these old lenses are much larger and heavier than you'd expect.
Flare isn't too bad on some of the simpler lenses, as with fewer elements there are fewer surface to flare.
If you really want the "personality" of the old lens to come through, you' want to use it wide open, so the lack of an adjustable aperture won't matter. (Still, I like to shut mine down just a little sometimes.) The old projection lenses never had adjustable apertures, and the early barrel lenses were slotted for insertable Waterhouse stops.
What Jim said about packard shutter; I made a really ugly adapter that goes in front of my bellows rather than inside.
BTW, neutral density filters or polarizing filters lelp you with the slow shutter speeds in brighter light. Slower films also help.
*cough* check my packard shutter mod in my signature
that's how I manage to use almost any lens on my cambo. Packard shutters require slower film though.
Maybe a Sinar (?) automatic shutter (the ones that look like an oversized packard with a huge range of speeds) might be better to use.
I've been looking but I can't find an Irish mount [/pun] at a fair price.
I'll be modifying another camera shortly.. I'm waiting for another packard shutter to arrive to begin on that one
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