Ross Resolux f4 9cm enlarging lens on bellows

iangreenhalgh1 · Expire: 2014-01-07

This is a very high quality item that was expensive when new in the 1950s. It's very heavy in a brass barrel covered in very thick and beautiful chrome. Coated with a blue colour, the aperture has a very solid click. I used an M39-M42 stepper ring to mount it on a set of M42 bellows then used my EOS 10qd to shoot some Kodak Technical Pan with it.

I exposed this roll of Tech Pan at ISO 50 and developed it in Kodak Microdol-X diluted 1:3 for 45mins at 20C with 10secs agitation every 10mins to tame the contrast and make a full grayscale. Contrast is still pretty high as it was just before sunset and the light was pretty harsh with deep dark shadows.

First one is wide open, other three are at f4.Sadly the first one has a tiny bit of shake so isn't a sharp as it could be. Sharpness at 5.6 is excellent and the bokeh is beautifully smooth, I like it a lot and will use it again but sadly it won't focus more than about 20cm away. It seems to be telephoto as the total film to lens distance when mounted on the EOS/bellows with minimum extension is much less than 9cm.

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Lloydy · Expire: 2022-01-01

That is worth following up, those results look very nice. They have a 'period look' about them, but it's still a good image.

jjphoto · Joined: 17 Mar 2009 Posts: 414

The Resolux 9cm/4 is quite a nice lens.

iangreenhalgh1 · Expire: 2014-01-07

Cheers guys. I would like to add the 5cm and 11cm Resolux's to my collection, I am trying to build a little collection of British cameras and lenses. There is precious little info available on the Resolux, i don't even know what design it uses, perhaps it's a Tessar, high quality enlarging lenses of this period often were (Dallmeyer Enlarging Anastigmat for example) although some were other types like the Kodak Enlarging Ektars, some of which were 5-element Heliar types. Ross used a number of designs under the 'Xpres' name, some are 5 element lenses similar to a Tessar but with a triplet in place of the rear doublet, there are also 4 and 6 element Xpres lenses so this Resolux could be one of the Xpres designs I suppose. I have a very rare f3.5 4 inch Xpres in heavy aluminium M42 barrel of roughly the same age as this Resolux and it's similar in character, the bokeh and the smoothness of transition from in-focus to out-of-focus are very similar, but the Xpres isn't super sharp, I haven't tried it on film though, only on my NEX-3.

Ross Xpres f3.5 4 inch on NEX-3:

Attila · Expire: 2025-11-18

Nice one really Ian , congrats!

danfromm · Joined: 04 Sep 2011 Posts: 595

Ian, before you play more with enlarging lenses, download this ctein.com/PostExposure2ndIllustrated.pdf and read what Ctein has to say about them.

On the whole, you'd be better off accumulating your small monetary units until you can afford to buy a proper macro lens or two that fit y'r SLR of choice. Oh, come to think of it, you already have a 55 MicroNikkor, don't you? So all you need is a 105.

Re accumulating a complete set of ..., that has nothing to do with photography. If that's what you want to do, fine, wonderful, go to it.

iangreenhalgh1 · Expire: 2014-01-07

Oh, I don't plan to buy any more enlarging lenses, I just happen to have a handful of them I've had for years, I sold half of what I did have last year and just kept the best ones.

I've had the Resolux a long time and I collect Ross lenses, hence I would like to add more Resoluxi (is that the plural) for collection's sake.