Carl Zeiss 400/4,5 DIY aperture

MarcinS · Joined: 30 Oct 2010 Posts: 43 Location: Poland

I bought Tessar 40cm/4,5 lens for LF camera but the lens did not have an aperture ;[
So I decided to make it by myself.

The lens:

I did some CAD works:

And send it to WaterJet:

I made the pins on the small lathe (I hate this!):

And the final is:

I noticed, I needed to fix the threads for lens elements. It was done on lathe,
After it I blackened entine interior with black mat paint which is used normally to paint the fireplace. I held it in the heat (250'deg C) fot 10 minutes and paint was dry and hardened.

then, I mounted the aperture unit inside the barrel. There ware some parts probably missing, and I had to make some fittings to be able to lock the lower ring in the barrel, and to make the upper ring rotatable. So I made a lock and a tiny bearings. You can see them here:

Then I made on the lathe the big ring to drive the aperture. And mounted it on the lens body:

after all, I screw all lenses in, and made a flange and mounted it onto a lens board.

The results are awesome, the lens is fantastic and produces great images. It covers much more than 10"x12". I use it for wet plate collodion works nowadays Wink