July 2024 Part 1 — This Month Through Your Adpated Lens

Travis Butler said:

This is kind of the default view of the U.S. Capitol:

Sigma fp, MD 35-70/3.5 Macro

...but I kinda prefer getting alternate angles.

Like this one, with the Peace Monument taking center stage.

Cool and shady!

At an angle.

Weather was miserable for walking around - high humidity and temperatures around 100 degrees - but I had really good luck with photogenic clouds most of the time I was there.

Click to expand...

Number 2 and number 4 do it for me. ohn

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
No photographer's gear list is complete without the printer mentioned !

Saw this little guy in my neighborhood one day, and came back the next day with my camera.

Leica CL 200 Micro Nikkor AiS

simple-joy said:

I've been quite curious about this lens because Toby Marshall has shown its awesome capabilities on creating completely different looks, depending on its focusing. (https://forum.mflenses.com/an-interesting-lens-enna-werk-correlar-80mm-f2-9-t77055.html ) When focused at infinity (and extended via an additional helicoid or bellows) it creates a reasonably sharp image and bubbles in the back of the focus plane. At close-focus it creates bubbles in front of the focus plane and smooths everything behind it drastically, creating an image which reminds me a lot of dedicated "soft-focus lenses" (or at least what I've seen of them online... I don't have a "real" one).

Here's a direct comparison:

[ATTACH alt="At close-focus it looks a little bit like a "soft-focus" lens"]3674750[/ATTACH]
At close-focus it looks a little bit like a "soft-focus" lens


When focused at infinity it's reasonably sharp even wide open and has a painterly, bubbly look in the background (and lots of blur in front of the plane of focus)

I assume that a number of lenses might show this characteristic, however with this one it's very easy and fast to achieve those different looks and they're very pronounced. Love to have as much versatility in a single lens.

Click to expand...

Very interesting effect and nice comparison. I have to try this some day when I find a lens of that type. I think it was common in those point and shoot film cameras to focus using the front element.

simple-joy said:

Here are a couple of shots:

Mandatory curve-view

https://flic.kr/p/2q2Nh9i

Skin-deep down

https://flic.kr/p/2q2Qi8L

Time Para-dogs

https://flic.kr/p/2pZKwcs

Click to expand...

Nice shots, nice bubbles!

I already have too many old lenses which I don't use enough.
But when I saw this one in a second hand shop it was so temptating I couldn't resist it.
It was mounted in some old enlarger bellows and very dirty but I didn't see any scratches on lenses.
So I took the risk and payed 5€.

Here it's cleaned outside. There's some small haze and dust inside. I don't care.



I screwed it very lightly on Novoflex bellows because of wrong threads. There's 39mmx0.75mm thread at the lens and 39mmx26tpi thread at the bellows. Next pictures taken with this combo.




f/11




Aperture full open at 1/6.3




At 1/6.3 detail. A lot of CA's. Processed in RawTherapee with automatic CA correction.




At f/11




f/11 much better but still a red line at the leaf. Maybe longitudinal CA. Manual CA correction did not help.




But defringe tool helped!

Pentax-F 35-70mm F3.5-4.5 on E-M10 II and various ART filters, SOOC.

What may appear as 'natural' - 'organic' - 'film-like' etc. grain is probably a grimy train window in the train racing across the Great Belt Bridge.

TimoKoo said:

I already have too many old lenses which I don't use enough.
But when I saw this one in a second hand shop it was so temptating I couldn't resist it.
It was mounted in some old enlarger bellows and very dirty but I didn't see any scratches on lenses.
So I took the risk and payed 5€.

Here it's cleaned outside. There's some small haze and dust inside. I don't care.


I screwed it very lightly on Novoflex bellows because of wrong threads. There's 39mmx0.75mm thread at the lens and 39mmx26tpi thread at the bellows. Next pictures taken with this combo.


But defringe tool helped!

Click to expand...

Very nice - great that you tried it. I guess most people won't bother adapting an old f/6.3 lens, but it can be a fun challenge in and of itself and Meyer lenses are often interesting, even when the specs don't impress.

I guess this one is quite old, given the (later very unusual) f/6.3 max aperture as well as the name and centimetre measurment...)

It reminds me of two old Leitz lenses, the Summar 12 cm f/4.5 as well as the Voort 9.5 cm f/4 which initially didn't look like interesting lenses on paper... but when I tried them my mind was certainly changed.

It's always worth a shot!

--
Experimenting manual lens enthusiast.

I've been on vacation in Italy recently and decided to take three lenses with me. Even though my time to photograph was very limited I managed to take a couple of shots with all of them.

In the case of the Schneider Kreuznach Xenon-E 28 mm f/2.8, an industrial lens most likely used for close-up inspection in automated processes, these aren't particularly interesting or specific to the location... but it was fun regardless, trying to capture a couple of details, in most cases immediately after the arrival.















... and for the fun of it, the first one in stereo 3D (cross view):





--
Experimenting manual lens enthusiast.

simple-joy said:

TimoKoo said:

I already have too many old lenses which I don't use enough.
But when I saw this one in a second hand shop it was so temptating I couldn't resist it.
It was mounted in some old enlarger bellows and very dirty but I didn't see any scratches on lenses.
So I took the risk and payed 5€.

Here it's cleaned outside. There's some small haze and dust inside. I don't care.


I screwed it very lightly on Novoflex bellows because of wrong threads. There's 39mmx0.75mm thread at the lens and 39mmx26tpi thread at the bellows. Next pictures taken with this combo.


But defringe tool helped!

Click to expand...

Very nice - great that you tried it. I guess most people won't bother adapting an old f/6.3 lens, but it can be a fun challenge in and of itself and Meyer lenses are often interesting, even when the specs don't impress.

I guess this one is quite old, given the (later very unusual) f/6.3 max aperture as well as the name and centimetre measurment...)

Click to expand...

Quite old, but not antique. I searched a little and found this . My lens must be some years older if you look at the serial number and focal length in centimeters. 90° coverage is impressing but I didn't know it when I bought it ...

The aperture then is a really relative thing. The older Weitwinkel Aristostigmat was f/9 lens and Meyer called it relatively high aperture. And 100° !


This from 1936 Meyer catalog.

BTW. did you know these https://www.cameraeccentric.com/ sites?

simple-joy said:

It reminds me of two old Leitz lenses, the Summar 12 cm f/4.5 as well as the Voort 9.5 cm f/4 which initially didn't look like interesting lenses on paper... but when I tried them my mind was certainly changed.

It's always worth a shot!

Click to expand...

TimoKoo said:

Quite old, but not antique. I searched a little and found this . My lens must be some years older if you look at the serial number and focal length in centimeters. 90° coverage is impressing but I didn't know it when I bought it ...

The aperture then is a really relative thing. The older Weitwinkel Aristostigmat was f/9 lens and Meyer called it relatively high aperture. And 100° !


This from 1936 Meyer catalog.

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot - that's very interesting. You're right... I have some very old catalogues as well and many of the lenses mentioned there were advertised for their "speed" with various f/8 and f/6.3 ones among them.

TimoKoo said:

BTW. did you know these https://www.cameraeccentric.com/ sites?

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure I've seen the URL mentioned once or twice, but never looked at that site. So I finally visited it and the information there is great. I love looking at those old catalogues and spec sheets. Thank you very much for sharing it!

--
Experimenting manual lens enthusiast.

simple-joy said:

simple-joy said:

BTW. did you know these https://www.cameraeccentric.com/ sites?

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure I've seen the URL mentioned once or twice, but never looked at that site. So I finally visited it and the information there is great. I love looking at those old catalogues and spec sheets. Thank you very much for sharing it!

Click to expand...

Me too!

I'm sure I did see this link some times at the Large Format Forum discussions but never did klick the link. Now I did and found interesting information.:-D

I remounted my Aristostigmat to my Cambo Actus. That lens has that ordinary #1 (Copal #1) mounting thread 39*0.75mm, So I could mount it into #1 lens plate as usual.

First I took a flat stitched picture of three shots with Actus and A7R4. The center shot and then 20mm left and 20mm right shifted. Virtually 64*36mm sensor size.

At 1950's Meyer claimed the lens should cover 90 degrees angle.

At 64*36mm sensor a 120mm lens covers 34.024° diagonal angle. And this one not everything very sharply. Everything is at very low contrast but the center part is still sharp enough to make a good picture (my conclusion).




Three 24*36mm vertical shots stitched to a 64*36mm picture. Developed to my taste in RawTherapee, much contrast and sharpening was needed. Downresized.

A detail from the red rectangle:




Detail from my conversion.

The same detail from Out of the camera jpeg




Detail from OOCJPEG.

I also made the Carpet shot using this 12cm Wide Angle Aristostigmat. It was hard to see any peaking because this is so low contrast lens. Also hard to focus manually for the same reason.




The floor shot tilted ~9°. f/11 OOCJpeg.

The near detail




OOCJpeg, a crop from the near end of the carpet.

And the far one




OOCJpeg, a crop from the far end of the carpet. in the dof but not very sharp and low contrast.

The lens is not the sharpest I have, but useful still. It's not coated, not even with single coating, very low contrast.

TimoKoo said:

I remounted my Aristostigmat to my Cambo Actus. That lens has that ordinary #1 (Copal #1) mounting thread 39*0.75mm, So I could mount it into #1 lens plate as usual.

First I took a flat stitched picture of three shots with Actus and A7R4. The center shot and then 20mm left and 20mm right shifted. Virtually 64*36mm sensor size.

At 1950's Meyer claimed the lens should cover 90 degrees angle.

At 64*36mm sensor a 120mm lens covers 34.024° diagonal angle. And this one not everything very sharply. Everything is at very low contrast but the center part is still sharp enough to make a good picture (my conclusion).


Three 24*36mm vertical shots stitched to a 64*36mm picture. Developed to my taste in RawTherapee, much contrast and sharpening was needed. Downresized.

A detail from the red rectangle:


Detail from my conversion.

The lens is not the sharpest I have, but useful still. It's not coated, not even with single coating, very low contrast.

Click to expand...

Quite good actually, considering its age. Thanks for showing. Old Meyer lenses are always interesting. Ever cared to check the prices of sold Makro-Plasmat lenses? That's crazy...

I don't have any of the "big name" Meyer lenses but I really like a couple of their lenses, so I get why they're popular.

--
Experimenting manual lens enthusiast.

Sigma fp, Hexanon 40/1.8





And a couple more flowers for it to sample:











--
Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/the_prof67/ Warning: Heavy Learning in progress.

Travis Butler said:

And a couple more flowers for it to sample:



--
Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/the_prof67/ Warning: Heavy Learning in progress.

Click to expand...

Excellent shots - really like the colors!

--
Experimenting manual lens enthusiast.

The Rodenstock (or Linus) Magnagon 75 mm f/3.5 - an industrial lens used in very expensive film scanners - is one of my favorites for creating Trioplan-like bokeh bubbles. The lens actually opens up to f/2.8 and while that still isn't particularly fast, it's pretty exceptional for the kind of high-grade enlarging lens type it is.

It definitely wasn't made for being used wide open in its original application and the lens shows a significant amount of glow wide open. As a taking lens this provides some nice options in terms of rendering, because if you close the aperture even slightly the glow disappears, while the bokeh highlights still look like bubbles. Stopped down further the lens gets extremely sharp (it may be among the sharpest lenses I have) and very well corrected. Robert OToole mentions "This lens has very clean image quality, much has much CA better than an typical enlarger lens, APO-Rodagon or Scitex 67mm. " in his overview of the lens. (https://www.closeuphotography.com/rodenstock-linos-magnagon-lens/magnagon-75mm-f4 )

I recently tried another sample of the Magnagon which - for some reason - is missing its aperture blades, so I had to experiment in different ways.

























Some of the images were taken with the lens reversed, which varies its rendering quite a bit

While not as versatile as the complete version with variable aperture, it is is a lot fun to use. Here are some cross view stereo shots:















--
Experimenting manual lens enthusiast.

Travis Butler said:

Sigma fp, Hexanon 40/1.8



And a couple more flowers for it to sample:





--
Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/the_prof67/ Warning: Heavy Learning in progress.

Click to expand...

Lovely shots! I looked at this lens in the past but more for landscaping, did not realize it gives such pleasant close rendering. The shades / uniformity of green and the contrast with flowers are great, colors are overall super pleasant.

thanks!!

Mark



--

T-Rex Mark said:

Lovely shots! I looked at this lens in the past but more for landscaping, did not realize it gives such pleasant close rendering. The shades / uniformity of green and the contrast with flowers are great, colors are overall super pleasant.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say it's always that pleasant:




Sigma fp, Hexanon 40/1.8

- but yes, it can be quite nice.

T-Rex Mark said:

thanks!!

Mark

Click to expand...

You're welcome!

--
Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/the_prof67/ Warning: Heavy Learning in progress.

I do not consider this lens (Canon 40mm f2.8 STM) on M6 a real adapted lens like vintages, but it meets the thread rules.

But I've bought a brand new CZJ Tessar 50/2.8 and I'll post its captures soon. It should arrive tomorrow.