Using NEX As A "Digital Back" for Large Format Cameras

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ProfHankD
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Using NEX As A "Digital Back" for Large Format Cameras
8 months ago

Ok, those of you complaining about how big A-mount lenses are on a NEX can skip this thread.

Still with me? Want even bigger and less convenient lens arrangements? Here's an Instructable that I just posted describing how to mount a NEX on the back of a large-format camera:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Large-Format-Adapter-For-Your-Mirrorless-Camera/

My NEX-5 looks like this on the back of my B&J 4x5:

Of course, this gives you all sorts of fancy tilt and shift, and a big bellows, but it also gives you access to some great lenses that normally wouldn't mount on a NEX. Yeah, large format lenses can actually resolve well on APS-C. Don't believe me? Here are a couple of large examples.

Here's one using my NEX-5 with a 1948 Kodak Ektar 127mm f/4.7 around f/11:

Here's an even more extreme one using my NEX-5 with a 1954 Goerz Apochromat "red dot" Artar 19in f/11 wide open. APS-C is a roughly 30X crop of what this lens can cover, but IQ is very good:

I am cheating a little. Contrast on these large-format lenses is very low, so I did tweak levels. Still, the images take that without any trouble.... I did not do any unsharp masking, etc.

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