Question about Universal Bellows

[cooltouch]

I have been in correspondence with the seller of this Vivitar Bellows:

Click here to see on Ebay

And I have asked him about the lens mount. He has stated that he's mounted lenses to it before, but as the images show, there is no visible lens mount on the bellows. Unless it might be M42. I asked specifically if it were M42 and he said it was not, but that it was T-mount.

Well, I have been at this photography thing for some 27 years now, and I have yet to see a T-mount for a fixed-mount lens to be fitted to. For a camera make, yes, but not for a lens.

Have I been missing something all these years? Is it possible to buy T-mount adapters for fixed mount lenses?

I am sure that makers of universal bellows, like the above, have designed them for interchangeability, hence the rear is most likely a T-mount, and perhaps the front standard takes an adapter for a given lens type, which can be easily replaced. But this front standard adapter is not any sort of universally available piece that I know of -- or am I wrong?

The seller has promised to check into things a bit further, and hopefully will provide me with some sort of answer that will be of some help as to whether or not I should make an offer or buy it. But I thought that some folks here might be able to shed some light on this as well.

Any comments? Observations? Experiences?

[luisalegria]

I have seen T-mount bellows before, the T-mount is of course the camera end. They seem to have had custom mount adapters on the lens end.

The scanned doc on that seems to have an adapter of some sort in the illustration, the M42 lens thats going in is not going to mount flush on the front standard, there seems to be some sort of adapter on it. The front standard does seem to be threaded though.

I may actually have one of these adapters. Last year I picked up a Vivitar lens mount adapter that was much like a T-mount, but was actually M39F-M42M - 42x1, not 42 x.75. I have never figured out what it was for.

It looks like a very nice bellows otherwise, it seems to fold up very thin. Thats a good thing if you want to get infinity focus with shorter FL enlarger lenses and the like. With my various bellows I can get infinity only with @105mm or longer.

[dickb]