Minolta CE 50mm f2.8 Enlarger lens on OMD EM5

SXR_Mark · Joined: 12 Jun 2010 Posts: 506 Location: England

This is a good lens. It is sharp at all apertures, gives good colour and smooth rendering. the only downside is that any out of focus highlights take on the shape of the hexagonal aperture; this can be seen in several of the shots below. I've posted test pictures at f2.8, f4 and f5.6 so you can see how the rendering changes. All pictures have had slight levels optimisation, but no other PP other than crop and resize. I think the first three were taken with a bellows and are very close focus (few cm); the red berries are only 5mm or so long. I think the other shots were taken with my home made focusing helicoid. I'll add some pictures later.

@f2.8

@ f4

@ f5.6

@ f2.8

@ f4

@ f5.6

@ f2.8

@ f4

@f5.6

@f2.8

@f4

@f5.6

SXR_Mark · Joined: 12 Jun 2010 Posts: 506 Location: England

This is the lens on my home made focusing helicoid. i made the helicoid from a Pentacon 50mm f1.8 PB mount lens which had very bad optics. I can get 9mm of travel and a minimum length of 24.4mm. Despite my best efforts, I can't quite get infinity focus with the Minolta enlarger lens, though I have other 50mm M39 enlarger lenses that will reach infinity on it. One of the problems is the Minolta has a very wide mounting flange that prevents it screwing down as far into teh helicoid as other slimmer lenses.

I've also added a 58mm filter ring to the front of the lens so I can add a hood or other accessories. I glued a stepping ring to the outer ring from a T2 mount after machining the two to fit. The T2 mount ring is a nice fit on the front of the lens with just a thin metal strip as packing. The screws that were in the T2 ring then clamp the whole thing onto the front of the lens quite securely.