Elmo 1.3 50mm projector lens on NEX3

[iangreenhalgh1]

Hi folks

This is a mint little projector lens I picked up for 99p on fleabay. It is beautifully machined from aluminium and has deep purple coatings. Rear focus distance is about 25mm, not managed to find a suitable lens to adapt as a focusing mount for it yet so had to hold it against the body.

It has a tiny dof but appears to be pretty sharp, I think this is going to make an interesting lens for indoor low light work or nighttime outdoor shots, hopefully I can fit an aperture to it as wide open that tiny dof makes it very hard to focus.

[Lloydy]

I found two projector lenses in a skip today, cheapo plastic things - an Agfa Agomar 85mm and a Reflecta Agomar90 f2.8, but they will be tried in my tape and waste pipe adapter very shortly.

[iangreenhalgh1]

Those might be quite good, some very good projector lenses have nasty cheap plastic barrels.

One of the things I want to get at the Wolves fair is some old projectors so I can remove the lens tubes to make focusing mounts for my projector lenses, of which I have a few.

[Lloydy]

I'll get the projectors out of the skip tomorrow Ian !

[iangreenhalgh1]

Ooh, yes please, I would be very greatful! (There's a Pk mount lens or two in it for ya! lol)

One of the things I want to do at the camera fair is hoover up any dirt cheap broken 135 and longer lenses, I need some more to chop up to re-use the helicoids and apertures to mount some of my odd and unusual optics, of which I now have a fair number!

[pat donnelly]

Great to see the offbeat lenses can perform so well!

The intriguing thing will be the mounts, of course!

[Lloydy]

I did my skip ninja thing this morning Ian, and there's good news and bad news.

The good news is, I got the projectors. Just before the woman from the house came out. Then I had to carry both of them in my special skip diving bag ( It's huge ! ) the long way home through the woods to avoid going past her house.

The bad news, they are good projectors, the Agfa is one I'll certainly hang onto as it doesn't use any kind of cartridge, you just pile the slides into a channel and flick the lever thing. Great for sorting the mountains of slides I need to digitise.
The Reflecta is a good one as well, a much newer autofocus machine, so I'm going to test that alongside the other projectors I already have ( a Braun, two very good Kodak professional / commercial projectors and a couple of others lurking around the place. )

So I'll probably come up with at least one, but which parts do you want ? Do you want a modern machine or an old completely manual type ?

The guy who lives at this massive million pound house is moving, and I know he's got an interest in photography because I've recently bought a bunch of photography books from the local charity shop with his name in, he has fancy printed labels to catalogue his library !
So I think a bit more investigation is required, I don't know what's at the bottom of the skip ! But the skip ninja will find out tonight.

[ForenSeil]

[iangreenhalgh1]

Well done skip ninja!

I just need the tube that the lens screws into, the lenses have a helical groove cut into them and ride in and out of the tube on this, allowing focus, I want the tubes so I can do what forenseil did and construct a focussing mount.

Cheers for that Forenseil, I remember your p;ost of that mount before, it inspired my idea actually.

[woodrim]

Ian: Help me understand your apparent fixation with these cheap and unusual lenses. Is it just the challenge to make it work? Is there a hope of finding something of a jewel previously undiscovered? With only few exceptions, they don't seem to perform at levels we would consider acceptable for normal camera lenses, and are also difficult to manage. I might expect them to hit the shelf after the challenge has been won. Again, the cumulative cost of all these might provide for some very good lenses.

So as not to be misunderstood, this is not intended to be a critique as much as exposing my bewilderment.

[iangreenhalgh1]

It's the search for something different, I only buy them if they are dirt cheap. I have a good-sized collection of really good camera lenses now, it is the unusual I seek.

I have some 'oddity' lenses I really love and enjoy using:

Gaumont-Kalee (made by Kershaw) Bloomed 2.2/5 inch - a wonderful portrait lens



Rathenower Visionar 1.9/168 - huge and heavy but capable of some wonderfully impressionistic and ethereal images



Docter Optics Wide Angle Zoom 3.3-13.9x - incredibly sharp and contrasty with a perfectly flat field and no CA at all. At the long end, a wonderful landscape lens, at the short end capable of greater than lifesize macro





Ross Xpress f4.5 8.5 inch - just a wonderful long lens, very sharp, good contrast, no CA, good bokeh, fantastic colours, lots of character.



Ross Xpress f4 5 inch - same qualities as above but with lower contrast.



So while there have been some oddities that didn't perform well, there have been more that produced imagery I consider worthwhile.

[luisalegria]

Why do people climb Mt. Everest ? You have to admit its rather second-rate property in those parts, what with the weather thing and no oxygen.

And so with fooling around with lenses.

Because they are there.

[nixland]

That is a damn sharp lens Ian. Nice findings

Projector & enlarger lenses are getting interesting to me. After I've finished exploring portrait lenses I hope I could find time to explore both lenses

[ZoneV]

[iangreenhalgh1]

Yes, it is fun, and you are correct - sometimes it is the cost factor, I wanted a portrait lens and couldn't afford a modern one so I looked at Petzval types, those are not cheap either, then I read that many fast projector lenses are Petzval types so I bought one of those very cheap and it turned out to be a very good portrait lens.

[Lloydy]

My Isco Gottingen enlarger lens on the K10


The lens is constructed ( and I use the word in it's loosest term ) from a Pk T2 adaptor that has the center piece missing. That is a nice fit for the plastic tube that originally had silicone bathroom sealant in it. The tubes you put in a gun thing. As you can see it is all held together with copious amounts of extra wide insulating tape, which was also used to build up the diameter of the lens so it was a nice sliding fit in the tube.
I did have to trim about 5 mm off the back of the lens to get infinity focus though, but it made no difference when I tried it as an enlarger lens again.




Here ( and in the second picture above ) you can see the 'aperture' - which is the foam disc that you find at the bottom of the stack of DVD's or CD's in those plastic containers that they come in. It was a nice fit and had a smaller hole that the wide open lens so I tried it, and it worked. But any size could be made from cardboard or thick paper.


Two test pictures, self explanatory really. The first is focused short on the lower steps and the other on the gate at the top




I have posted these before on another thread, but bloody Photobucket lost them !