

102 year old lens attached to digital camera - FleursDuMal
http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?p=133996

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js2
So this is a 102 year old lens mounted on modern Canon DSLR. Obviously it
requires an adapter to physically mate the two.

Not to take anything away from that, but I thought I'd point out that you can
mount 50 year old Nikon lenses on modern Nikon DSLRs, no adapter required, due
to Nikon's commitment to the F-mount it introduced in 1959:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_F-mount>

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jacobolus
> _So this is a 102 year old lens mounted on modern Canon DSLR_

Isn’t that precisely what is suggested by the title?

Also, this isn’t any “adapter”:

> _My friend, a Russian lens technician, who loves nothing more than to
> frankenstein equipment [...] called me into his store in NYC. [...] He found
> in a box of random parts, hidden inside anther lens this gem. A circa 1908
> (possibly earlier) 35mm lens. Still functioning, mostly brass, and not
> nearly as much dust or fungus as one would think after sitting in a box for
> over a hundred years. This lens is a piece of film history people, and at
> this point rare beyond words. So i say to him, “Wow... what do you have in
> mind?” He smiles, and says (in the thickest Russian accent you can imagine)
> “I can make this fit EF you know....” My eye twinkled, and then 6 nail-
> biting hours later, he had it finished. My Russian lens technician is a mad
> scientist and he took what sounded like an angle grinder to the lens to make
> it clear the flange distance and the mirror.... This lens’s value is
> unclear. It’s sort of on loan. It’s the only lens of its kind on a 5D... or
> any digital for that matter._

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stinkytaco
Article also specifies the type of lens:

> _This is a circa 1908 Wollensak 35mm F5.0 Cine-Velostigmat hand cranked
> cinema camera lens_

Which is not a Canon lens.

In other words, he probably should have read the article.

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js2
I read the link and I wasn't denigrating it at all. I was just trying to point
out that it reminded me of the Nikon F-Mount which has been a very durable
mount.

For many photographers, lenses are the most expensive part of the camera
system and it's nice that Nikon has kept their camera bodies backwards
compatible with their lenses for 50 years. It is also largely forward
compatible (allowing modern Nikon lenses to be used on older Nikon cameras).

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jacobolus
It’s pretty fun that for all the technological camera changes we’ve seen in
100 years, the optical core of these systems is pretty much the same: a lens
with a shutter whose image circle covers (in the most popular case) a 24×36 mm
rectangle.

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ilamont
No background in optics, physics or serious photography, but I am curious:
What sorts of effects or "feel" does an ancient lens like this typically
generate, and why? For instance, will the lens elongate, fade, or gather
microscopic pitting?

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jnovek
My money's on that this lens is a Cooke Triplet
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooke_triplet> which was (and is) a fairly
neutral lens design.

There is some astigmatic aberration as well as vignetting visible in the
photos provided, but it's possible that this lens was intended for a smaller
image circle than 24x36 sensor in the 5DmkII. All lenses will have astigmatic
aberration and vignetting at the edge of their image circle (which is normally
outside the photographic media the image is being projected onto).

This lens is uncoated and highly susceptible to lens flare. As I understand
it, many lenses before the 4-element Zeiss Tessar also tend to have more
pronounced flare than later lens formulas. You can really see this in some of
the photos.

Overall, it's neat little lens and I would shoot it in a heartbeat. It looks
very sharp in the center with gentle fall-off near the edges. The owner could
go a long way to get the most out of it by crafting a little lens hood for it
-- it really helps with older lenses like this.

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kjuhyghjk
And this lens is likely to be f5.6 or slower - it's a lot easier to make a
35mm f5.6 design than a modern f1.2 !

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jacobolus
f/5.0, the link said.

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gaoshan
I __love __the visual qualities of that lens. Wow! The slight softness, the
vignette, the muted tones. I have bags full of old lenses and lens elements
(going back to cameras from about 1920) myself and now I'm inspired to do
something with them on my own digital body. What fun!

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sbierwagen
Not extraordinarily unusual. All you have to do is align the focal plane of
the lens with the camera sensor. Usually this is done with a metal flange of
greater or lesser complexity. Here he just had to adapt the threads on the
lens to the threads on the camera body. Twenty minutes in any well-equipped
machine shop.

Modern lenses are very complicated, because they work to cancel out all sorts
of subtle and troublesome distortions, but a lens can be very simple indeed. A
Lensbaby[1] is just a single lens element attached to some stiff bellows.

And that's it.

You could hand it to Robert Hooke and he would nod in comprehension. He might
find the plastics more interesting, but the point is, you could have built a
Lensbaby at any point in the last three hundred years.

You can get even simpler than that, as my link notes. Poke a hole in a body
cap with a hot needle, and you've made a pinhole "lens", which is thousand
year old technology.[2]

1: <http://www.dansdata.com/lensbaby.htm> for an excellent review. He's
actually reviewing a Lensbaby 2, which uses a doublet instead of a single
uncoated lens, to reduce chromatic aberration and flare, which is quite
missing the point, I feel.

2: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura>

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Construct
_Not extraordinarily unusual..._

This person stumbled upon a 100+ year-old cinema lens and thought to adapt it
to a modern DSLR, take some excellent pictures with a wonderful vintage feel,
and post them online for all of us to share. I would most certainly call that
unusual.

Let's give credit where credit is due. This is a wonderful and novel piece of
work and I'm definitely grateful that s/he chose to share it with us.

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edkennedy
Wonderful juxtaposition of old and new. Good photos!

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phreeza
Site is down :( Coral Cache not working either.

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listic
Not quite! It's working intermittently; try more.

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alextgordon
Mirror, just in case: <http://fileability.net/mirror/cinema5d.com/>

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kingkawn
I've known the photographer for about 8 years, he does lots of interesting
projects like this.

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lotusleaf1987
Does anyone know where you could find a how-to guide to do this yourself? Or
is this the type of thing best left to professionals?

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js2
It may be a 39mm lens:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M39_lens_mount>

You could start with a T-mount adapter to get to 42mm:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-mount>

<http://www.adorama.com/LNTMEOS.html>

Then a 42mm to 39mm step-down adapter ring:

[http://www.amazon.com/Fotodiox-M39-Adapter-Zeiss-
Pentax/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Fotodiox-M39-Adapter-Zeiss-
Pentax/dp/B001G4QXQY)

Not sure about the clearances, and you may not get infinity focus depending
upon how far out the lens ends up being situated from the focal plane of the
sensor.

Edited to add: google turned up this direct EOS to M39 adapter:

    
    
      http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110365260908&ssPageName=STRK
    

But note "DOES NOT allow focus to infinity".

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kjuhyghjk
The Canon EF mount has a fairly short back focal distance = the distance
between the back of the lens and the film/sensor is less than most other
cameras so it's easy to make an adapter to hold another lens the correct
distance away.

