Thanks for all the posts and excellent ideas. I think that finding a "for parts" body is reasonable in price and makes it fairly easy to attach.
To extend this thread a little further, the idea is to mount a digital camera on the back with a Mamiya RB/RZ lens mounted on the front. There are plenty of adapters to mount digital cameras onto the rear of a 4x5, in this particular case a Sinar Norma.
Of course, the digital camera will have a shutter, so there's no need for the between the lens shutter in an RB lens. One solution would be to permanently tie open the depth of field preview lever on the RB lens using, say, a length of fishing line. One could then manually open the aperture for focus and manually close it down for the exposure. Apparently, the shutter needs to remain cocked, so as to attach and remove the lens from the mount.
There are also all the RZ lenses, and this raises a few questions:
> Are there any advantages of using an RZ lens over an RB, or vice versa?
> Can either an RZ or RB mount be used to mount either an RZ or RB lens? (I know that RB lenses can be attached to an RZ mount.)
> Do RZ lenses have the same kind of depth of preview lever as the RB lenses? Could the same solution anticipated above for RB lenses also work for RZ lenses?
> Aren't RZ lenses electronic in nature? Would this interfere with what I'm contemplating?
I don't know about cocking the thing - but there are two different rear lens caps for RB lenses - one just pops on, and the other has tabs so you can bayonet lock the cap on. It wouldn't be the sturdiest thing ever, but it would get the lens mounted to a lot closer to the board than an extension tube would.
Then again, there are junker RB bodies on ebay for under fifty bucks, you could likely get the front standard off and rig up a trigeer.
But like everyone else here, I assume the image circle would be useless. With 4x5 lenses so cheap
yeah, I know - I'm the guy playing with getting a flipped Brownie Hawkeye lens on my RB with shift.
Mounting the lens to a rear cap would certainly work for a while. But like you, I'd be concerned about the longevity. But, thanks for pointing out that these rear lens caps exist. It might come in handy as a short term solution.
And correct, extension tubes do indeed extend the lens a distance from the camera. That's a concern for being able to focus. One nice thing about the Sinar cameras, is that their minimum focus distance is under 40mm, including the Norma.