Bell & Howell Eymax Anastigmat 2 inch, f/4.5, what is it

[screwunscrew]

G’d day, everyone

Having an Eymax in the doing I’d like to share some information about that lens.

It’s a triplet, the classic Cooke portrait lens, in a fixed focus design. We have a nine-blade diaphragm and a scale from f/4.5 through f/22. The iris mechanism, however, is of the modern sort, you know, modernism as it had begun with WWI. Stamped through leaves, the actuacting cage held down by a music-wire spring in a groove. I don’t know when the lens was made, serial number is 279,XXX. 1927 perhaps, the Bell & Howell Eyemo camera was first marketed in 1925.

We have a blackened all-brass construction with a rear mounting thread of 15/16" that fits the Bell & Howell Eyemo quick-change bush. A front thread of 0.96", a tad wider than the rear, holds a blackened aluminum sunshade tube which in turn accepts glass filters secured by a threaded and slotted spring ring. The filter diameter is 1.026 inch or 26 mm, its thickness 0.086" or 2,184 mm. My example is a yellow filter, named AERO 2, Made in America. Most probably has it come from Wollensak who also made the lens. The elements, a plano-convex, a biconcave, and an asymmetric biconvex glass, are not bloomed.

These were the cheapest standard focal length lenses sold with the Eyemo camera. One could upgrade to four-elements lenses such as the Taylor, Taylor & Hobson Comat, five-elements lenses such as the Bausch & Lomb f/1.9, six-elements lenses such as the TTH Opic, and other Cooke designs. Wollensak made a one-inch Eymax, too.

Since I haven’t finished work on my Eymax you will have to wait a little for images made with it. I have an Eyemo 71-C that is waiting for a shoot. I am quite sure I shall have nice and sharp pictures out of a lens that is 91 years old. The grease was rotten, it was about time to do something.

Kind regards to all cinematographers and photographers