Home Made Soft Portrait Lens

[Jeff Bannow]

How about mounting a meniscus lens on an RB-67 ???

Glad you asked...

I machined a plastic replica of the bayonet mount for an RB...
Attached it to a PVC barrel containing a 133mm x 63 mm meniscus lens...
Added a 68mm filter ring to the barrel...

Presto; a soft focus lens for my RB.

Shot at f11, FP4, 1/2 second (guesstimate), straight negative scan.

Reinhold

www.classicBWphoto.com

Nice! I wish I had something like that for my Hasselblad ....

 

[Reinhold]

Fitting a meniscus lens onto a SLR such as a Hassleblad, Mamiya, Bronica, or Pentax is not as easy as putting one on a flat lensboard.

Without machining a special adapter, some ideas come to mind...

... Adapt a body cap.
This is probably the quickest solution if the body cap has bayonet lugs.
A slip-on style body cap may need some way to better secure it to the camera.
The lens tube can be screwed, glued, or duct taped to the cap.

... Use an extension tube.
The bayonet end of an extension tube set is an ideal connection.
It could even be configured for interchangeable lens barrels.
Machine each lens barrel to fit into the extension tube base unit.
A light slip fit with an O-ring might be just the ticket...

... Cannibalize a junk lens body.
Depending on design, the bayonet end portion might make a good adapter.
Break out the hacksaw...

For our 35mm friends, the ubiquitous "T" Mount would let them fit smaller meniscus lens tubes with minimal fuss...

No excuses now: Go Forth and fill the earth with soft focus photo's...

Reinhold

www.classicBWphoto.com

 

[Lee L]

This little ebook on CD-ROM might be of interest to those in this thread. It has a huge variety of mounting suggestions for many different camera bodies, shutter ideas, focusing mechanism ideas, sources for lens elements, etc.

http://www.surplusshed.com/pages/item/m2797.html

Lee

 

[nhemann]

I own this e-book and by way of a review I would say that given there is not a lot of information out there regarding how to build your own lenses its a good place to start with but after that it gets tedious with just build summary after build summary - the whole document is close to 1200 pages. There is little to no discussion on how to get the best out of the lens (by stopping down - even minimally) so the pics provided generally exhibit distractingly large amounts of aberration.

Also, while not specifically a problem with the book, LF lens makers should be aware that large format lenses are not discussed.

That being said, if you are looking to understand the basics of lenses and how to get one built and onto your camera its a good starting point, but it is certainly not the end all and be all of reference materials.

 

[deltafour]

Soft Portrait Lens

This is more than a patch-up collection of paper tube and duct tape.
The barrel is machined from PVC tubing.
The lens is seated against a machined stop and is secured with a machined PVC retaining ring.




Love your homemade lens!

Is that PVC, Sch 80?

I see you made a nachined stop and retaining ring.

I was wondering, does matter how far in the tube you put the lens with the machined stop an the retaining ring to hold the lens in?

What type of lens would you use for lanscape?

Thank you for the idea, I'm going to build one

Delta

 

[deltafour]

EBOOK

I would love to see this Ebook.

What's the name of it?


Delta

I own this e-book and by way of a review I would say that given there is not a lot of information out there regarding how to build your own lenses its a good place to start with but after that it gets tedious with just build summary after build summary - the whole document is close to 1200 pages. There is little to no discussion on how to get the best out of the lens (by stopping down - even minimally) so the pics provided generally exhibit distractingly large amounts of aberration.

Also, while not specifically a problem with the book, LF lens makers should be aware that large format lenses are not discussed.

That being said, if you are looking to understand the basics of lenses and how to get one built and onto your camera its a good starting point, but it is certainly not the end all and be all of reference materials.

 

[Reinhold]

I have quite a bit of information, data, and drawings on my website:

www.Re-inventedPhotoEquip.com

Reinhold

 

[buggz]

Hmm, McAfee blocks your site?

I have quite a bit of information, data, and drawings on my website:

www.Re-inventedPhotoEquip.com

Reinhold

 

[deltafour]

WOW! Thank you for the link to your site!

Thank you, Reinhold! You're a freakin god !

All those years of research you just filled in many pieces of the puzzle for me with just your site!

This is freakin GOLD!



Delta

 

[deltafour]

Hello, Reinhold

Didn't you have on your site, where you were selling your homemade lenses?

Delta