Wratten #1 closeup lens as ULF lens

robopro · Nov 29, 2006

I just started work on the plate holder for an 11X16 pinhole camera that will use glass plate negatives. Thought I'd build the holder first and then build the camera around it. Had this crazy idea about building a simple lens to make the camera interchangeable.
After a little research I've decided to use a 49mm Wratten #1 closeup lens placed 'backward' in the holding tube (convex side facing the inside of the camera). This has a focal length of 1000 mm, an extremely large image circle, and produces a fairly sharp image on a piece of cardboard, but there is some abherration around the edges and the subject needs to be at least 12 feet away.
Would adding a second lens help this any? If so, how far apart should they be placed, and should they face each other or both face the film plane?
I'm doing research on this now, as well as how to vary the focus in order to get closer to the subject, but any hints or suggestions from anyone who's already been there would be appreciated...

Ole · Nov 29, 2006

Two symmetrically placed positive meniscii about a central stop is called a "Periskop", and was patented by Carl August Steinheil in 1865. Steinheil did some really good work on the spacing, curvature and the placing of the stop, though...

I've used one (a Voigtländer WZ), and it's surprisingly good!

Lee L · Nov 29, 2006

You might want to get a copy of Primitive Photography by Alan Greene, which has a "cookbook" style approach to making your own cameras and lenses. The recommendations for a Periskop there are for the two lenses to be placed about 1 lens diameter apart and stopped down to f:45 - f:64. Spacing out to 1.5 times diameter flattens the field, but rapidly vignettes. The stop should be exactly half way between elements. Greene puts his lenses in PVC barrels and shows how to make spacers, stops, etc.

Whatever you do, don't look at surplusshed.com for cheap surplus optical elements with which to build your own lenses.

Lee

robopro · Nov 29, 2006

The Alan Greene book must be pretty good cuz it gets recommended a lot and people who recommend it seem to know what they're talking about. Guess I'm gonna have to break down and (shudder) buy a copy...

surplusshed.com, eh?

Lee L · Nov 29, 2006

robopro said:
surplusshed.com, eh?

NO! WAIT! Come baaaack......

Lee

DWThomas · Nov 29, 2006

don't look at surplusshed.com for cheap surplus optical elements

You had to say this didn't you.

Worse than you may realize, their brick & mortar presence is less than 40 minutes from me -- OH no-o-o-o-O-O-O! :/

DaveT

Ole · Nov 29, 2006

robopro said:
The Alan Greene book must be pretty good cuz it gets recommended a lot and people who recommend it seem to know what they're talking about.

The book is good and entertaining - but when it comes to optics, I'm afraid Alan Greene hasn't got a clue what he's talking about! His "lens constructions" are all softer and have more aberrations and distortion than a simple landscape lens would have!

Calling the double meniscus that Green recommends a "Periskop" is almost an insult.

Just to balance out the recommendations...

Jim Jones · Nov 29, 2006

According to Rudolf Kingslake's 1950 Lenses in Photography, Steinheil's Periscopic at f/30 could cover almost 70 degrees. The 49mm diameter of your Wratten #1 might cause vignetting, depending on optimum element spacing. Even so, adding a second 1 diopter close-up lens in Periscopic configuration might work for you. A narrow band filter to reduce chromatic abberation and even smaller apertures should improve sharpness.

robopro · Nov 30, 2006

I like the idea of the filter. What would you recommend?

Jim Jones · Nov 30, 2006

The classic tri-color filters were red 25, green 57, and blue 47B. These, especially the ubiquitous Red 25, should be more readily available than the countless other fairly narrow band filters. The blue 47A or, with narrower bandpass, the 47, 47B, or 48, should give results somewhat like photography done in the days of only blue sensitive material. The ordinary green X1 and X2 filters have wider bandpass than the 57.

robopro · Dec 1, 2006

You live in rural northwest Missouri?

Ole · Dec 1, 2006

Jim Jones said:
According to Rudolf Kingslake's 1950 Lenses in Photography, Steinheil's Periscopic at f/30 could cover almost 70 degrees. ...

An extreme case of coverage is the Goerz Hypergon, which strictly speaking is a Periskop. But a coverage of 135 degrees in one well-designed construction does not mean that any lens of this type will have the same coverage!

Another Periskop-type lens is the Voigtländer WZ, which was made as a 180mm enlarger lens for 9x12cm film. The stated coverage for that one is less than 45 degrees.

Both of these have a much higher curvature than the Wratten close-up filter.
I would be surprised if you could get decent sharpness over much more than 20 degrees with two +1's...

rwyoung · Dec 1, 2006

robopro said:
You live in rural northwest Missouri?

Yeah, that would be Nebraska.

Sorry Jim, had to do it.

Terence · Dec 1, 2006

Ole said:
The book is good and entertaining - but when it comes to optics, I'm afraid Alan Greene hasn't got a clue what he's talking about! His "lens constructions" are all softer and have more aberrations and distortion than a simple landscape lens would have!

Calling the double meniscus that Green recommends a "Periskop" is almost an insult.

Just to balance out the recommendations...

Living up to the Luddite Elitist standards, eh? For what it's worth, he does build a landscape lens as well. If nothing else, the book pushed me to try building my own lens, as well as a couple of cameras.

My gripe with the book is the quality of the diagrams. Different line weights (thicknesses) for different pieces and materials would have made them a LOT more clear to the reader. The diagrams of the film holders is enough to drive a drafter mad.

Lee L · Dec 1, 2006

The name "Primitive Photography" didn't lead me to believe that the optics were the state of any given period of the art, so I just took the book as a resource from which to start playing. Just as few people bother to build the optimal pinhole, I expected the book to provide a beginner with something that works on a very basic level, not reproduce commercial offerings that optical designers have come up with. On that level, it's an interesting book.

I also agree completely with Terence's comments on the drafting.

Lee

Ole · Dec 1, 2006

Lee, I agree that the goal of such a book shouldn't be to build great lenses from scratch.

But what I don't like (except for the diagrams) is that his combined lenses will be worse than a simple magnifying glass - and it seems as if he doesn't realise this! I'm not saying the lenses should be exellent, only that if you take the trouble to put two lens elements together, one should be allowed to expect that this will be an improvement over a single lens element...

Lee L · Dec 1, 2006

Ole said:
I'm not saying the lenses should be exellent, only that if you take the trouble to put two lens elements together, one should be allowed to expect that this will be an improvement over a single lens element...

Fair enough... and nice to have that limitation noted here. I haven't had time to actually build any of Greene's projects yet. Is there another similar book that you'd recommend in place of "Primitive Photography", at least for lenses?

Lee

Ole · Dec 1, 2006

The cheap way to decent lenses is ... ebay.

Even in ULF. I paid $85 for a Suter Aplanat B No.6, focal length 550mm, covers 12x16" with room to spare. And about half that for a Ross Rapid Symmetrical 18x16", about 800mm focal length. A bit more for the Angulon 210mm f:6.8, but it is quite usable on my 12x16" camera. And it has a shutter, too.

The funny thing is that these cheap old Aplanats/Rapid Rectilinears would be very expensive to produce today, although possibly not quite as expensive as the Hypergon...

robopro · Dec 1, 2006

I made a mistake in my original posting when I said the format of my camera is 11X16. Must have had a brain anurism. It's actually 16X20 -- quite a difference. Sorry about that.
Anyhoo, I have read that combining two positive meniscus lenses cuts the focal length in half. If true, then my Wratten won't work. But I did find a couple of +5/8 lenses with a 2000 mm focal length for 4 bucks each. I think I'll just stick two of these in a PVC tube with an aperture to stop it down to
f64 and see what happens. Dividing focal length by desired fstop gives me the size of the hole, right? I'll just try using the lens cap as the shutter, toss in a couple of filters from Jim's recommendations, and see what happens...

Jim Jones · Dec 1, 2006

With such low powered and thin lenses, dividing the focal length by aperture diameter should give close to the correct f/number. The focal length of the two lenses will be slightly more than half of the focal length of one alone. You'll want to be able to change the spacing of the two lenses until you've found what works best. Like Ole says, an improvised psuedo Periskop isn't apt to have nearly the coverage of the properly designed original.

Jim Jones · Dec 1, 2006

robopro said:
You live in rural northwest Missouri?

Yep, rural NW Missouri. The nearest neighbor is half a mile away. The nearest town, almost 4 miles. The nearest city (population 9,000) is 12 miles by road. This means the last star trails I shot were 9 hour exposures. Maybe they would have been better in Nebraska, but I like some civilization.

RWYoung -- The last time I was in Lawrence, they still had poor old Comanche on display. It kinda gives a new meaning to "one horse town," doesn't it? Oh well, better honor the horse than the horse's behind that led Captain Keogh and the others at Little Big Horn.

robopro · Dec 1, 2006

I grew up in rural Missouri -- 6 miles from a little town called Rogersville. That was before night lights. On a summer night us kids used to lay on our backs in the back yard and actually see the Milky Way, count meteors, and watch Sputnik fly by. I now live in a small town just south of Kansas City and I'm lucky if I can see Orion on a clear night. Ah, the good ol' days...

Jim Jones · Dec 1, 2006

The lights from Kansas City, 65 airline miles away, ruin the night sky to the southwest. Otherwise, it is nice to be near enough for an occasional trip to KC. Tomorrow the Dead Link Removed is mounting a B&W exhibit in the 82nd Street KCK library. Fortunately the snow didn't derail the schedule. You should have enough snow to photograph. There was only 3 inches at home, though.

robopro · Dec 2, 2006

Well, I got a few, but we'll see how good they are (35mm, B&W). I was always a summer kinda guy. Winter for me has always been just a bad time to get through until next summer...

rwyoung · Dec 2, 2006

Jim Jones said:
RWYoung -- The last time I was in Lawrence, they still had poor old Comanche on display. It kinda gives a new meaning to "one horse town," doesn't it? Oh well, better honor the horse than the horse's behind that led Captain Keogh and the others at Little Big Horn.

As far as I know he is still there but there was quite a bit of work done on the old boy and some upgrades to his digs. It was years ago that he was on display in the main lobby of the natural history museum in Dykstra hall. That made him quite threadbare! He has lived in glass cases for at least the last 20 years, probably more like 30.

Wratten #1 closeup lens as ULF lens

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