Spiratone (aka Hama) Bellows Master SST with bellows lens

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9098 Location: Houston, Texas

This is probably the rarest bellows designed originally for 35mm SLR cameras. And the most full featured. It was built by Hama and sold by Spiratone as the Bellows Master SST throughout the 1980s. I don't know what its actual dates of manufacture were -- I only followed it via Spiratone's ads during the 1980s. The "SST" stands for Swing, Shift, Tilt, but it has rise and fall movements as well. These days, it can also be adapted for DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, of course. The bellows came with a 150mm f/4.5 Spiratone Macrotel lens, threaded in T-Mount threads, interestingly enough.

Whenever the Bellows Master SST shows up on eBay, which is fairly seldom, it usually sells for big bucks -- somewhere in the $300-400 range. I lucked out with this one, though. I picked it up as part of a kit and paid essentially nothing for it after I sold off other pieces in the kit.

One of the interesting, yet limiting aspects of this bellows is that the lens mount is T-mount threads. It takes a T-mount adapter on the rear so that it can be mounted to virtually any camera, but the other end of the bellows is also T-mount thread. For the lens. Which is not at all common. So the Macrotel 150mm f/4.5 is something of an odd duck in that respect. Well, I didn't want to be limited to using only the Macrotel, so my quest for what is known as a T-mount "flange" adapter began. Turns out T-mount flange adapters are about as rare as this bellows is. Finally I lucked out. I found for sale on eBay a Soligor bellows that had a lens mount for Nikon lenses. I contacted the seller and asked if that lens mount unscrewed from the bellows standard. They replied that it did, and I bought the bellows on the spot, for the ridiculously low price of $10. Once it arrived, I unscrewed the Nikon lens adapter from the Soligor bellows, and with trembling fingers, tried it on the Spiratone bellows. Yay! It worked! The adapter threaded onto the Spiratone bellows perfectly. So now I had this great bellows to which I could adapt most any camera and attach Nikon mount lenses. On a hunch, I took a look on eBay to see if adapters were available for Canon lenses to mount onto Nikon bodies, and yes, I found them. So I bought one for this setup, which then gave me the capability to mount almost all of my manual focus lenses -- Canon FL, and FD and well as Nikon.

But for tonight's little exercise, I decided to stick with the Macrotel. I wanted to see just how good it was in my quick and dirtly little try-out. Turns out, the Macrotel is probably just ok as macro lenses go. It was a pretty rough test though, so I'm reserving judgement. For now.

Here's a pic of the bellows mounted to my NEX 7. Sorry about all the stuff in the background. I just took a shot of the bellows where they were set up. And yes, I was actually using that much tilt for the pics I took. I didn't really have to, but it was interesting seeing that I could use that much and still get a full-frame shot.

I did some playing around with swing and rise/fall too and found that this lens allows for pretty high angles of movements in these directions as well. So this Macrotel lens probably has a fairly large image circle, I'm thinking.

For a subject, I chose the tuners on one of my guitars. The gears and scrollwork made for sufficient detail to evaluate the lens's sharpness. I had the lens set to f/8 for a decent amount of depth of field and hopefully to put the lens in its "sweet spot" as far as sharpness goes. I focused on the center gear train. The other two are a bit soft already.

kds315* · Expire: 2021-03-09

I have a few of those Hama/Spiratone/Kenlock/... TS bellows (somewhere I guess), used them a bit and the Tilt/Shift can be quite useful, although rather limited with most lenses and that sensor format.

BTw, I found this tutorial rather useful for using it: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/tilt-shift-lenses2.htm

One downside is, that neither camera nor lens (especially that) can have some weight, as the bellows mechanics are rather weak. There are much more sturdy ones, but of course that comes at a much more steep price. This one was/is rather overlooked, yet if it shows up fetches up to 250-300 or so currently.

A much sturdier solution, if that interests is the CAMBO Actus TS bellows: https://captureintegration.com/first-look-cambo-actus/ and the Rollei X-ACT2, which unfortunatelly is no longer made, due to their insolvency, that was a fantastic system, which still can be found used: http://www.dhw-fototechnik.de/de/fachkamera-x-act/rollei-x-act-2.html, brochure here: http://www.light-studio.ru/content/uploads/XActSalesfolderE.pdf

I was mentioning my bellows (Nikon mount) here with some examples: http://forum.mflenses.com/which-macro-bellows-tilt-t6297.html

[Xcuse the crappy phone image]

PS: Michael, a closer look makes me think your bellows is a bit differently made?

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9098 Location: Houston, Texas

Hey Klaus, thanks for the additional information and your photos. I dunno, your bellows looks very close to mine. I took some more pics of mine, so you can see it more clearly. Mine is missing one knob and shaft. Well, it's not missing, it's just not in place. The worm gears used in these bellows are plastic and one of them disintegrated, so the knob and its shaft just spins. I'm still able to push the standard instead of using the knob though, and I can still lock it down, so losing the knob's worm drive is not that big of a loss.

Ignore all the dust. I cleaned the bellows but it's obvious I missed quite a bit.

Hama bellows showing some tilt and swing. The two adapters in front are right, the T-mount flange adapter for Nikon mount and left, the Canon FD lens to Nikon body adapter.

View of the other side:

End view with Nikon mount in place:

Bellows closed up:

Opposite side, closed up:

I had planned to find some flowers to take some macro shots of today, but I ran out of day light. I'll give it another try tomorrow.

kds315* · Expire: 2021-03-09

IT IS obviously the same bellows Michael, thanks for the additional pictures!

dickb · Joined: 04 Apr 2008 Posts: 821

There are at least two versions of this HAMA/Spiratone/Kenlock bellows. This one discussed here has three locking screws for the lens and camera mount in the square metal front and rear standard, on the top, side and bottom. I don't have one of these anymore, but IIRC when the screws are loosened, the whole lens or camera mount can be taken out, the connection is a 46mm dovetail.

#1

The other version has only two locking screws, top and bottom, and the mount is captive. The lens mount has an m42/0.75 female T2 thread and an m46/0.75 male thread.

#2

Ignore the rear standard, I've rotated it so it doesn't interfere with my camera grip.

Apart from the number of locking screws, or rather screw holes, as these screws are sometimes missing, there is another visual difference. The 3 screwed ones usually have bright metal platelets on the lower parts of the standards, the 2 screw version doesn't, as far as I have been able to determine.

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9098 Location: Houston, Texas

Thanks for that additional information.

A couple days ago I took my bellows out with a couple of lenses to shoot some stuff. The lenses I took were a 55mm f/2.8 and 200mm f/4 Micro Nikkors. What I soon discovered with each lens was that the bellows could be used only as a variable length extension tube, really. There were just no movements possible. I was a bit disappointed by this finding.

But then I realized why my Spiratone came with that 150mm lens. It must have a very large image circle, thus allowing considerable movement. So really, if one wants to take advantage of the movements a bellows like this offers, one must attach a lens with a large image circle.

Next time I take these bellows out, I'm gonna shoot using the 150mm Spiratone optic.