MC80 or MC35 at rugift.

[zewrak]

I checked the rugift lenses out. There are two tilt/shift lenses named MC80 and MC35. Anyone tested these? Do they operate well with bellows?

[Abbazz]

I have the Arax 35 Tilt&Shift lens, which is the same lens as the "MC 35" sold on the Rugift website. It is made by Arax in Ukraine and is based on the Arsat 35/2.8 shift only lens. Hartblei sells the more expensive Super-Rotator, which comprises the same optical unit in an unique rotating mount.

It's a good lens, a bit soft wide open. That's normal, as this 35mm lens was designed as a superwide lens for 4.5x6 format and F/2.8 is quite a stretch for a superwide on medium format. The lens becomes quite sharp from F/5.6 onwards. You can find some samples in this thread, this other thread, this third thread and on that site.

I think the price of this lens has become much too expensive. I bought my Arax 35 for $325 in 2006. Today, the price has more than doubled: $625 on Rugift and $685 when bought directly from Arax! Except if you need this lens professionally, I would recommend you buy a tilt or shift adapter from Arax and some good Zeiss glass in Pentacon Six mount to put on the adapter.

The "MC80" sold by Rugift is in fact an Arsat 80/2.8 lens (available new here) put on a custom tilt & shift mount by Arax. You can buy the plain Arsat lens in Pentacon Six mount from Rugift ($149) with the shift ($85) and tilt ($129) adapters from Arax for a total of $363. It will deliver the same results as the $425 specialized lens. And if you add a $200 Zeiss Flektogon 50/4 lens bought on eBay, you will have a two lens tilt & shift set for less than the price of the 35mm T&S alone...

About your point concerning bellows, I guess you can use these lenses with bellows but I have never tried with mine, as the lens is already heavy and clumsy enough on its own .

Cheers!

Abbazz

[zewrak]

Thanks for a long and informative post. Much appreciated.

What I basically want to do is to get as great DOF as possible with bellows and extensions. Looks to me from your links that it is a tilt adaptor I would want from that. I am all new to bellows and tilt/shift.

Maybe I should get one of the tilt adaptors and a cheap lens to try it. Are there no tilt adaptor that take M42 lenses that can be recommended?

[Abbazz]