Noblex 150UX focusing

fatso said:

That's my experience with the Noblex. It's razor sharp from edge to edge. It's the only camera that comes close to the resolution of my SWC/M Biogon 38mm. Some small details are only visible if printing larger than 60" x 143", it's amazing. I find it hard to believe that the Seitz lens would be any better.

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My experience, too. My impression is that the Noblex lens is nothing extraordinary—just well-made tessar type carefully mounted and calibrated to the film plane, and because it is a swing lens camera, it always uses the sweet spot of the image circle, making the edges just as sharp and bright as the center.

It's been a while since this post but I thought I's share some conclusions after shooting over a hundred rolls of film with the camera. I ended up mostly bracketing at M and Infinity at f11, and occasionally at N. Images that I didn't bracket were shot at f16 or f22.

In the end I found that 95% of the images were perfectly focused at Infinity and didn't require the additional effort of bracketing. f11 seems to be the sweet spot of the lens but there's no reason not to use f16 or f22; the effects from diffraction are negligible even at print sizes of 42"x 100".

Focusing at NEAR (N) seems pointless for landscapes and even close foreground objects did not benefit from this.

Here is where bracketing helped and improved the sharpness on the very back edge of the truck and foreground rock. But I could probably have gotten the same result with only one frame shot at f22 / infinity.

fatso said:

Ok, so what you are saying is that the lens doesn't actually focus at infinity but 30m ? I'm not sure if that is true in practice. When I bracket, at infinity everything very distance is razor sharp, while M is very sharp at distances from 10-30 meters. I couldn't get anything sharp at the N setting - even the ground with the camera low down.

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in widelux 1500 i calculated 1/25 for COC which is 0.04 smaller so sharper but DOF is smaller. it depends what one thinks is sharp enough from A to B.
RS 65/70/220 also called Panoscope earlier 1987 i have one it was 65/70 then- till they changed name to avoid Panasonic conflict Seitz Sr. told me. sliot can slide between orbits to change distance. problem of all these cams is slitwidth and lens which is not adapted to curved film. none is so always not best results.
in W1500 there are huge sharpness-problems when focussed below 5m. not in Noblex. dont know if it has adjusted lens most probably slit is smaller than 3mm. RS has 3.5mm i reduced to 3mm thanks to a tip of chicago panorama-pro.
i see Noblex-lens has improved contrast than W1500. lenses of both at not at same height level- i have comparison made in a bank-entree. dont know which has lens a bit rised.
My repairman knows all about W1500-problems. he is the reason Panon improved and seems to have solved the banding-problem. but other parts are nonprecise. e.g. lens-film-distance is not adjusted. he had to shave upper or lower lenght of gate. i tested shooting with u-shape(cam mounted upside down) from a high building and comparing both shots cam normal and upside down. After the banding a second NOGO. Adorama refused to test( I had doubts) and Kubota/Panon-owner told to send them back. Had to pressuer him to send me replacement, the very same shit. One must live with that he told. Third parties made the parts! first was removing the discs pressing film on filmpressing-rollers at the ends. Big drama in 90ties till Widepan was born. Still has similar sickness. all said and can be read in rotatingpanoramiccameras.tk my forum.

Noblex made a Closefocus-cam only.

fatso said:

Can I focus in-between these fixed zones?

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Absolutely yes. An absolutely rare accessory for the camera was a distance scale that could be affixed over the camera's 3 zone scale. It was not an OEM accessory, but was sold by a Noblex repair service. Unfortunately I never had been able to track one down. Have read that the "infinity" distance setting was not actually at infinity but at 18 meters. 18 meters comes mighty close to the "(focused at 56.4ft)" which is in the pdf file posted. Anyone can shed any light on this? With knowing the actual focus point on the marked infinity symbol, it should be quite easy to mock up a focusing scale that could be attached to the focusing wheel on the Noblex. Would certainly make things a lot easier for me when shooting with my Noblex. Comments on this most welcome....

Your photos are hella dope!

fabulousrice said:

Your photos are hella dope!

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Thanks!