Reader showcase: Using a Sony NEX as a digital back on an antique camera

I would to try this out on my Dad's old German press camera. It's a Carl Zeiss in very good condition, with a leather case which has several thin metal plates, and one thick plate with six black paper pulls, sort of like the tabs we used to pull out of the old Polaroid land cameras. Which plate do I make the hole in? I have been looking for project, and would like to try my Sony a7r with one of these plates. Can someone give me some insight as to which plate to use. I already have an extra adaptor : Larry

what for?
If it had tilt/shift abilities, ok. But in this case:
what for??

Very creative!

You can by adaptors for 4 x 5 s with graphlock rear standards. One drawback is that, unless you use telephoto lenses, your minimum focal length lens - at infinity - is about 130mm. But still good for product, stitching and macro work.

I have a Norma and a 150 macro grandagon that I've used to good effect.

The other thing to be aware of is that since larger format lenses don't have to be as critically sharp - due to the massive film area - your results may be a little disappointing.

Beautiful images. Very nicely done.

"Collecting dust" were the operative words for me. Need to clean out the folder carefully before exposing a naked sensor to it.

With flaky old bellows can you ever be sure?

That is unheard of!!
Oh, no, wait, I did the exact same thing 18 months ago...
http://www.similaar.com/foto/oldcam/oldcam.html

What surprised me most is that the image didn't look "old" by itself: the lens in that 100-year-old camera is slow but not bad at all.

There was a time when lenses had pictorial qualities and we treasured the idiosyncrasies of lenses. In the modern age, it's all sharper, more contrasty, more of this, more of that. That's why so many of us were excited about using vintage lenses on APS-C and Micro 4/3rds sensors. It isn't all about lpm.

Sounds great, DPR. I did quite a bit in the olden days with 9x12 and 10x15 folding plate cameras.

I dare say this is the best glass you can get for your Sony!

All the people criticising this fun exercise must be "really fun at parties" - NOT!!

Maybe a good business idea: after the trend of making retro-looks for the bodies, why not producing lenses that look like antique cameras ? Hey, Fujifilm, can you hear me ?

It's amazing to see genius men to create his own rig and devote his time to photography.

Nice work!! I love the ingenuity of DIY'ers! How about the Mamyia RB 6x7? There must be a few thousand of them sitting idle. With it's rack focusing, lens shutters, and revolving back, it may be an ideal body for an enterprising machinist to focus on.

Yes ! Let´s have some real compact 36x24 digital system camera which we can have in a pocket, a bit like a Kodak Retina, but with interchangeable lenses :)
http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Kodak_Retina_IIc
Mamiya 6 and 7, Plaubel Makina 67 would also be very nice in digital :)

Hello,
Thank you dpreview for featuring the project and thank you all for kind comments. I acquired ICA long time ago but used it only few times with original glass plates, and then it was collecting dust sitting as a decoration on the bookshelf.
Few comments/answers
1.I did the project purely for fun and yet after almost two years, still using the camera.
2.I chose Sony NEX because of its compact body, excellent focus peaking and tilting LCD. I think it was a good choice because now I can attach A7 using the same adapter.
3.I did little post processing in ACR, Tessar is surprisingly sharp and works well for the close-up photography
4.Old ICA’s front/rear standard has some movements for tilt, shift, rise, fall and swing.
All the best and have fun!

Great work! Very innovative!

Fun doesn't have to be practical and art doesn't have to make sense to everyone. I'm personally the engineer type and don't do such things but it looks like they had fun. And the results are great, and I personally don't care whether Photoshop was involved or not.
Kuddos!

Would be kinda fun shooting video through this rig. I can imagine showing up on a movie set with it and getting some interesting looks.

Nice project; a fun one to give new life to old glass. Some of the comments here suggesting image limitations or more practical means of achieving similar image bely the nature of the project. Perhaps those individuals should buy some duct tape (not used in this particular hack) and broaden their horizons.

I love DIY photography hacks and I've posted a couple myself. As with lots of things related to photography as a hobby and craft, it's often the enjoyment of doing it, as much as it is capturing the very best results with the very best equipment.

I think those who can't see this don't know how to have fun.

This was a great little hack. Congratulations to vkphoto for getting featured on the front page and for capturing some very good photos.

The photos look good

The photos have a nice look. I think it is worth the effort to use this rig on occasion.

forget about the technical aspects or someone has done it before blah blah blah...

c'mon guys! this is photography!!!

Very cool. Congratulations on being featured today!

Yes, it is kind of useless, but it doesn't need to be useful to be a very fun project. Lovely to see an old lens come back to life.

The lens was indeed collecting dust... I have a dust allergy and just looking at the pictures of it almost makes me sneeze.

And, by the way, should be ok to peel off the ugly marketing sticker from the LCD now. :-)

No pun intended, but this is old news. ;-)

Multiple such projects have been discussed before in DPReview forums, and the DIY forum really doesn't provide any better mechanism for giving details of such projects or browsing them -- a well-indexed DIY user article mechanism would make more sense than a DIY forum. DIY instructions are either omitted or posted at other sites -- as I've been doing for years, mostly in the Sony NEX forum. For example, here are two 2012 Instructables, both introduced in the NEX forum, explaining how I made a mount for my NEX-5 to be used as a digital back on an old 4x5 ( http://www.instructables.com/id/Large-Format-Adapter-For-Your-Mirrorless-Camera/ ) and how to make custom lensboards including one that can take SLR lenses ( http://www.instructables.com/id/Custom-Lensboards-For-A-Large-Format-Camera/ ).

Can you move the camera around and stitch to get the whole FOV?

For most of the shots, he'd be better off using a real macro lens. And of course this is nothing new. There have been view camera adapters around, certainly for Nikon F mount and Canon EOS, for a very long time. Even some that allow some movement along the image plane for panorama shooting, which makes the whole exercise a bit more worth the effort.

It's definitely fun, of course.

An interesting approach with very nice results.