Tominon 127mm & MP-4 Shutter

OK. Clearly I must have misunderstood something somewhere along the line.

In a box of "unidentified 4x5 stuff" that was included with a recent ebay purchase, I got a Tominon 127mm f/4.7 lens, mounted in a housing that has click f-stops, marked f/9 through f/64. It was mounted on a graphics Copal #0 lens board. I do not think that the lens and the housing go together originally... the front lens cell is marked "lens made in Japan" and the housing is marked "lens made in Germany."

I thought I had read recently that the Polaroid MP-4 shutters were made to accept this lens, and I went out on ebay and purchased one. It arrived today. I thought that since my son likes to do 4x5 still life shooting, with the original design of the Tominon, this would be a good lens for him to use.

The MP-4 shutter mounts perfectly onto the lensboard, but when I tried to put the lens (in the housing) on the shutter, it does not fit... the threads on the back are too small (diameter) for the front of the shutter. Do I need to take the lens cells out of the housing and mount them directly on the shutter like a regular lens? I took the rear cell of and it fits perfectly on the shutter, but the front cell is deeply recessed into the lens housing. If I am to take the cells off, what about the f-stop diaphram and controlling the exposure other than time?

Am I hopelessly lost or just overly confused? Sorry, I do not own a digital camera or I would have included a few pictures. I hope someone can guide me. Thanks.

Westley

You are a little confused. First off, your 127/4.7 Tominon cells -- the front cell is engraved Tominon etc., isn't it? -- are in a barrel made for another lens. So you're right there. And if the barrel is on a board with a hole drilled for a #0 shutter, well, then, it is a #0 sized barrel. Go here http://www.skgrimes.com/products/index.htm for a handy table of sizes. Then measure, and you'll know for sure what you have.

The MP-4 Copal #1 press shutter has no diaphragm, is intended to be used with lenses in barrel made to screw into it. Its front threads are M40x0.75. Your #0 barrel, if it is a #0, has mounting threads M32.5x0.5. Since the MP-4 shutter has no diaphragm, putting lens cells into it except to check fit makes no sense at all.

I gather that you can't get the Tominon front cell out of the barrel its in. If all else fails, grab it gently with needle-nose pliers. I've extracted a recalcitrant front cell from a Schneider barrel by wrapping a rubber band around it ... But the front of the barrel came with it and the diaphragm assembly came out too. Reassembly wasn't easy. So be cautious.

Finally, the 127 Tominon isn't the best lens for 4x5. It is a tessar type, just barely covers the format. I shoot one on 2x3, where it works very well, but with 2x3 coverage isn't an issue. The big surprise about mine is that although it was made to be used as a macro lens -- it came from a gel cam -- it shoots well at distance.

Thanks, Dan, for the information. After I posted my questions last night, I actually did most of what you said. I used needle-nose pliers with hest shrink tubing on the jaws to remove the front cell from the barrel. Yes, it is marked as the Tominon 127mm and the front and rear cells fit perfectly into the shutter. And the shutter mounts perfectly on the #0 board.

I knew about the MP-4 shutter not having any diaphram, which was why I had hoped that the barrel that the Timonon was mounted in would fit onto the front of the shutter... my warped logic was that if the cells mounted into the barrel, wasn't it likely that the barrel would also fit the shutter. I can see now that this thought was the source of my confusion last night, compounded by the fact that I have been traveling on the road for the past 4 days and I have just gotten in from the airport...

So now I have 2 additional things in my project drawer: a Tominon 127mm in a barrel that still needs a shutter and an MP-4 shutter (no diaphram) that needs a lens in a barrel to fit it.

I'll continue to look...

Hmm. If a #1 shutter mounts on it, the board is drilled for #1, not #0.

Now, if you have a #0 shutter with diapragm that needs a lens, I have a 150/9 G-Claron in barrel that may do for your son.

Good luck,

Dan

You are so right... I confused everything in my first post - - it was late; I apologize.

The lens barrel and the MP-4 shutters are both #1. The Tominon lens in the barrel was originally mounted on the #1 board. I removed it and mounted the MP-4 shutter in the same hole with no modification.

So, if I want to use the Tominon 127mm, I need a barrel to mount it into that has a mounting thread that matches the front threads of the MP-4 shutter (M40-0.75), and dump the #1 mount barrel I have it in.

But given your comments about its suitability, perhaps I should just set all these pieces aside. From my reading, I had understood that at fairly close range (he is usually working 3-4 feet from his subjects), this would be a better choice than the old 135mm Optar he is working with. It seems from what you say that I was wrong in that thinking. He does occasionally use a 6x9 back in lieu of 4x5, but I would probably not invest much more time or money unless he did that more.

Perhaps the correct strategy is to continue researching and look for another lens for him and put these part aside.

Westley

Oh, my. At 3-4' a 127/4.7 Tominon should do very well on 4x5. I'm not sure whether it will cover 4x5 at that distance when front-mounted, but if you want to find out you can have an adapter made to hold the barrel and lens in the front of a #1. I buy adapters from www.skgrimes.com . Not cheap, though.

You'd probably be better off buying your son a 127/4.7 Tominon in shutter, like mine, than buying my 150/9 G-Claron and a shutter to hold it. You'd probably be best off waiting and learning and then making a sane decision.

Cheers,

Dan

Here is a picture taken from the internet of the barrel that the Tominon 127mm was mounted it... I just happened to find it on a website about enlarging lenses.

In this picture, there is a 150mm F9 G-Claron mounted in the barrel, but mine had the Tominon 127mm f4.7 in it. So I guess that it was an enlarging barrel and just happened to fit a Copal #1 board.

Thanks for all your advice.

wclavey said:

Here is a picture taken from the internet of the barrel that the Tominon 127mm was mounted it... I just happened to find it on a website about enlarging lenses.

In this picture, there is a 150mm F9 G-Claron mounted in the barrel, but mine had the Tominon 127mm f4.7 in it. So I guess that it was an enlarging barrel and just happened to fit a Copal #1 board.

Thanks for all your advice.

Click to expand...

As you also might suspect, things don't just happen. That looks like a Componon Lens barrel, no matter what cells are in it. That should (I think, I don't have my enlarging lens with me) have a M39 thread on it.

Perhaps a Packard shutter is the answer, although the shutter timing is a bit problamatic. Where Dan has indicated, front mounting a 127 for 4x5 might not give you a lot of room for swings and tilts before you run out of image, even at 3 to 4 feet.

Best of luck,

tim in san jose

Your #1 Schneider barrel is probably left over from a 210 or 240mm G-Claron lens. As you've found out the MP-4 shutter isn't a good solution because of the lack of a diaphragm. For still life's the barrel would actually work very well. MOST of the time we stop down and have enough bellows factor that exposures are in the seconds and minutes so a barrel and lens cap works fine. Also when you are near or at 1:1 the scale on the barrel will actually be correct with no other mathematics. Here's why. Chances are it had a 240mm lens in it to begin with. At 1:1 magnification with the 127 you're at about 240mm anyways. Voila. Just use the scale that's there for the close-ups and make some pics. The quality of macro type work with those little cells is astounding.

Regarding closeup use of Tominon on Land MP-4 camera, I had a chance to see the whole Land MP-4 in trash heap, and I got to disassemble them to take some useful parts home.

Mine was Copal self-setting shutter with 135mm Tominon. The 135mm was reverse mounted, i.e., the lens was facing the film side, not the table side. There was a conversion ring somewhere in the camera that could be used to mount the shutter on my Durst Laborator 138 enlarger with the 135mm lens on it (the lens facing the easel). It's sometimes useful when I do quick sensitometry work to measure the speed of some plate emulsion in darkroom. Imagewise, the quality is very good for enlarger use. Who said Tessars are crap? That may be true for some lenses but not this one.