Printing 16mm motion picture in the color darkroom using a 28mm schneider lens

Look for this:

Ian C said:

The problem is the design of the D5. It uses a long, tapered bellows. When they’re stacked solid, the stack is incompressible. Attempting to force them closer will temporarily spring the lens-mount receiver to angle the lens slightly towards the column. That will spoil the focus due to tilting the lens axis relative to the negative. Overdoing it might damage the bellows. The lens-mount receiver is too small to allow a deeply recessed mount as is required for a short focal length lens on the D5. The D5 is best used with lenses of, say, 75 mm to 150 mm.

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+1 - although one can get away with a 50mm lens, I ended up using a 60mm lens with my 135 negatives on my D6, and that worked better.
16mm negatives would have been a disappointment .

ic-racer said:

Look for this:

View attachment 359261

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Along with either the 421-114 or 421-115 lens plate.
From KHB's website:
http://www.khbphotografix.com/omega/LensMountD5.htm

The photo in post #26 shows the top side of the 421-105 slide-in lens mount. The bottom is shown in the first photo in the following KHB Photographix link. Note the machining on the edges that reduces the thickness of the plate to about one-half to fit the receiver. The plate only fits the receiver with the machined edges facing downward.

The 421-105 is different from the 421-107 slide-in plate only in that it lacks the roughly 3/8” thick mounted spacer as seen on in the second photo.

http://www.khbphotografix.com/omega/LensMountD5.htm

The photo of post #26 shows the 421-105 with an EXTENDED lens mount that would place the lens FARTHER from the negative than a flat plate. If you used the mount reversed as a recessed mount, it would have to be mounted on the bottom (machined side) and extended thought the hole in the slide-in plate.

The 421-115 Recessed Plate 25mm Hole (For use with 421-105 only) is shown in the 10th photo on the KHB page. You must install the slide-in plate in the receiver first without the mounted lens. Then you insert the lens and mount from the bottom and lock it in place with the two knurled thumb screws. The recess in the formed mount is only 14 mm deep. Some of that 14 mm is consumed by the thickness of the slide-in plate. This places the lens only marginally closer to the negative than using a flat mount.

It will almost certainly still be too far from the negative to attain focus. I own a D5XL and both these parts. They don’t solve the problem. The lens is still much too far from the negative on my D5 to attain focus. This is a case of the designer making a huge error. The recessed plate would have to be MUCH DEEPER than any of the D5/D6 plates shown in the KHB page, including the ones cited for use with 28 mm lenses.

How this happened is unknowable at this remove 49 years after the 1975 introduction of the D5 and 58 years after the D6 was first offered for sale in 1966 (per KHB site).

To see what’s needed, lay a flat metal or glass plate across the top of the negative stage and lower the head onto it. Close the bellows as much as you can without crushing them. Install a slide-in plate into the receiver and insert a scale into the lens opening to measure the distance upward from the bottom of the slide-in plate to the plate you used to bridge across the negative stage. This dimension is what’s important.

In post #25, I calculated a distance of 26.03 mm (1.02”) from the negative to the flange surface of the older version of the 4/28 Componon for the magnification necessary to make a 5” x 7” print. Take the measurement on your D5 and think about it. While it isn’t necessarily impossible to fabricate a VERY deep lens mount to place the lens at the required position to obtain focus, it is impractical for most of us.

To the best of my knowledge, Omega never made a recessed mount deep enough to properly position a 28 mm lens on the D5/D6 enlargers, even though the lens mount tables shown on the KHB site imply that the combinations shown will do so.

Using an enlarger that allows placing the lens at the required position is the practical solution.

Ian C said:

Using an enlarger that allows placing the lens at the required position is the practical solution.

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This seems to be inevitable conclusion.

The OP could also consider printing a strip of images. Back in the 70ties a friend did that from b/w double 8. Looked great.

I wonder if I can simulate the OP's question with my Leitz Valoy II or Focomat Ic? To find out if this would work and to what size. Leitz made a 13x17mm negative mask for the Focomat Ic and Valoy II enlargers. Picture attached.

I can use a 35mm negative with this mask and see to which size that enlarges. This would be for the weekend.

Cami, can you tell me the mm size of a single 16mm frame? 16x?. And what is the orientation, portrait or landscape? Could you consider printing two or three images at the same time?

Ian C said:

The problem is the design of the D5. It uses a long, tapered bellows. When they’re stacked solid, the stack is incompressible. Attempting to force them closer will temporarily spring the lens-mount receiver to angle the lens slightly towards the column. That will spoil the focus due to tilting the lens axis relative to the negative. Overdoing it might damage the bellows. The lens-mount receiver is too small to allow a deeply recessed mount as is required for a short focal length lens on the D5. The D5 is best used with lenses of, say, 75 mm to 150 mm.

The deepest Omega D5 extended formed lens mount (used in reverse) is only about 14 mm in depth. That leaves the lens too far from the negative to focus. It’s useful to know how close the lens needs to be from the negative to obtain focus. That will help you decide if it’s practical to use the lens you have in mind.

The starting point is: What size projection do you want and what is the format of the film? The 16 mm motion picture frame is usually 10.26 mm × 7.49 mm but can be larger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_mm_film

If you want to make a 5” x 7” borderless print, the largest 5 x 7 rectangle in the negative is 10.26 mm x 7.33 mm, which is an efficient match with little wasted from the negative.

To enlarge this to a borderless 5” x 7” print you’d need some edge overlap of the projection, say, 5 mm per side. So, we’d have to size the projection for 137 mm x 188 mm, magnification = 18.3X. Using a 28 mm lens, the distance from the negative to the first nodal point of the lens is 29.53 mm.

About the physically smallest 28 mm lens that might fit into the small space available on a D5/D6 enlarger is the old version of the 4/28 Componon. I don’t know if the current version would be small enough to fit. The older lens has a flange distance of 24.5 mm.

At 18.3X the flange would be 26.03 mm from the negative. That would require a substantially deep custom-fabricated lens mount that would have to fit inside the bellows. The aperture would have to be preset to its optimum value before mounting, as you probably couldn’t adjust it after mounting the lens into the deep mount. The slide-in plate would have to be installed into the receiver first. The slide-in plate would have to be altered to accept the custom mount. Then the mount & lens would be installed onto the slide-in plate and secured with screws.

Although it might be possible to make such a mount, it’s not practical. It would make more sense to look for a second enlarger for this project that can place the lens at the appropriate distance from the negative without modification.

The lens and mount shown in post #5 is the right idea. That is an Omega B22/B66 mount. These enlargers have short bellows that make this practical. But that’s not going to work on the D5/D6 due to their much longer bellows.

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super insightful thanks so much for you advice. After much time tinkering i have decided to use a 50mm rodenstock lens and raise the enlarger head to print it. It simply wasnt practical to print on a 28mm lens. I bought the lens specifically for printing on 16mm but had to realize that lens may sit on the shelf collecting dust for a while. However still fun to try and tinker.

The Minolta 30mm Rokkor-X CE is unique in that it has a Flange Focal distance around 40mm, similar to the Flange Focal distance of many 50mm lenses.

I had a look at enlarging 13x17mm using 2 lenses: the Focotar 50mm and the Olympus 38mm.

Everything worked fine, with both lenses there was no fall off and the projected image looked sharp. Of course, looking through the grain focuser the grain was larger than normal (35mm).

To print an image of 21,5 x 28cm using the 50mm, the distance between lens and the surface of the easel was 90cm.

To do the same size using the 38mm, this distance became 63cm.

I probably could have gone up to 30x40cm (12x16in.) using the 50mm. And 40x50cm (16x20in.) using the 38mm. I used a Leitz Valoy II, with an extended longer column.