Now That's An Adapter

A couple of weeks ago, in response to a post about an apochromat enlarging lens, Tyler Monson linked to a picture of an apochromat of his own—a 4-inch Göerz Red-Dot Artar, c. 1960.

In passing, he threatened to find a way to mount it to a DSLR and actually take a picture with it.

As you can see, and as he documents in a recent blog post of his own, he succeeded—shown above is his steampunk lensmount, allowing focusing of the Göerz process lens all the way from infinity down to one foot.

And here's one of the pictures taken with the Artar, stopped down to ƒ/45. And you thought a 50mm Summicron on a G1 was out there?

Nice, eh?

Mike
(Thanks to Tyler)

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Comments

[Iñaki]

That is a laaaaaaaame duct taping job, that is, for a clear sample of a *entax K10d -note the asterisk to conceal the camera model, as useful as the duct tape used on the picture-.

[thought the lens adaptation has a certain low-fi frankenstain appeal I do find very attractive, I have to say].

Which has some comments and questions on my head most probably nobody will be able to answer -nevermind-.

Cool water droplet rendering, by the way. But there something weird on that picture, regarding the very different shades of green.

[Mike Johnston]

"But there something weird on that picture, regarding the very different shades of green."

Don't read too much into that. The color management from the original to your screen...well, it would better be called color mismanagement.

Mike

[WeeDram]

Hmmm ... not only is that extra cool, but now I'm wondering how to steampunk a Fujinon 150 onto something. :)

[Frank M.]

When I read the original post on Tyler's blog, I thought that image of a "disguised" K10D with an unbelievably retro adapter was just amazing. It illustrates quite eloquently the idea that no matter how hi-tech your camera might be, the key factor concerning image quality still is the glass you put in front of the sensor.

By the way: Tyler's blog is well worth a look.

[Lars K. Christensen]

Reminds me of my own K-mount Leica Hektor 2.8/85. But it definitely looks better - and is probably more usefull too...

[Harry Lime]

I suppose this post does raise a good question...
Why aren't more lenses for digital APO?

Everyone is having kittens about 'purple fringing', but off the top of my head I can't think of a single fairly standard lens made by NikonCanonPentaxOlympus that is APO...

[Max]

There are so many amazing lenses floating around for peanuts... Gotta stop thinking.
A tilt shift adapter for my 6x9 fujica's 50mm...

[Iñaki]

"It illustrates quite eloquently the idea that no matter how hi-tech your camera might be, the key factor concerning image quality still is the glass you put in front of the sensor."

I´m sorry to say, Frank M., that I disagree [quite something, and then some].

Right now it is as important as the lens the quality of the sensor behind, as you are stuck with it for quite some more time, and you can not change the brand that easily as you could with film.

I do firmly believe that the statement "the lens is the important stuff" is no longer true -or completely true, that is-.

There is some improvement on different lenses. But, as different as they were before, nowadays each body will give you a very different result, something that didn´t happen with film.

[Tom]

I think someone needed more ventilation in their dark room, if you get my meaning.

[Tyler Monson]

Once upon a time, all cameras came in chrome finish. In order to make them less conspicuous, we would cover all the bright parts with black tape.

Today, nearly all cameras are black but the manufacturers continue to splash bright logos everywhere. So I still use tape, because cameras are tools, not billboards.

A secondary benefit is that the taped camera is a less attractive target to the ignorant thief.

Iñaki: In the ten years I've been doing digital, I've gone through six sensors/cameras. As technology matures, the changes have come more slowly now, which is nice on my wallet.

Harry Lime: Ever listen to these posters deride f/4 lenses because they are "too slow"? How do you think they would react to f/9 or f/11 as the maximum apertures?

Tom: I don't get your meaning, but that's okay.

Cheers to all!

[James McDermott]

That's nothing. The most casual glance at my photographic work reveals that I've been steampunking jam jar bottoms to my cameras for decades

[ObiJohn]

That looks like a nice image... but what about diffraction limiting? A 10 MP APS-C sensor-equipped dSLR should be diffraction-limited by f/16 (if not before). How does this image look at, say, 50% of full-size? Or even 25% of full-size (which would approximate a 300 dpi print)?

[Harry Lime]

>Harry Lime: Ever listen to these posters deride f/4 lenses because >they are "too slow"? How do you think they would react to f/9 or >f/11 as the maximum apertures?

A lens does not need to be slow to be APO. The Leica R 2.8/100 APO comes to mind.

[Chris]

Tyler - I'm impressed! And from the position of the switch in the second photo, I can see you have this auto-focusing! Wow! :-)

[WeeDram]

Methinks you've been peeping too many pixels, ObiJohn ... if you get my meaning. ;)

[Tyler Monson]

Don't know if this addresses your question, John, but I just added an image to that post that is a corner detail. I changed the resolution to 72 ppi without resampling, which made the size of the image 54"x 36". Then I snipped out a corner and saved it in JPEG format.

Yerz.

[Mike Johnston]

ObiJohn,
Tyler has posted a response on his blog in the form of a full-resolution detail.

For those who don't know what "diffraction limited" means, it is the aperture at which diffraction becomes the dominant aberration because all other aberrations have been minimized.

Mike

[Mark Sperry]

Love that low contrast on a modern sensor. I use my pre-ai Nikkor 50mm ƒ1.4 on my D700 for just that reason! Converts to b&w better than my other two lenses...which I think might be due to the single coating.

There are so many odd process optics at my current darkroom. I'd be very interested in converting a Rodenstock 105mm. On second thought, I've never really thought of my D700 as a tripod camera.

Cool beans!

[Tyler Monson]

Harry: You'll have to forgive the geezer-brain. My immersion in the technical side of photography was mostly in the sixties, so my knowledge is dated.

I see that Leica offered a wide range of APO lenses (and I know better than to even hint that Leica might be anything less that the epitome). Zeiss has APOs. Voigtländer has an APO 28-210mm zoom and even some Sigma lenses are touted as "APO".

Wonder if the definition has changed...like "mirror lockup", which used to mean you could lock the mirror out of the way and keep taking pictures.

Beware the Grumbling Geezer!

[ctein]

Dear Obi,

The useful real-world diffraction limits are not so easily established when digital cameras are involved.

Read these three columns of mine for details:

Column 78: Diffraction—Quantum Weirdness in Your Very Own Home
http://tinyurl.com/bl2wll

Column 79: Diffraction In Perspective
http://tinyurl.com/c9zfj3

Column 88: Why 80 Megapixels Just Won't Be Enough...
http://tinyurl.com/c4dj5n

pax / Ctein

[Paul Amyes]

The term apochromatic is really abused by lens manufactures. Technically it means that the 3 wavelengths of red, green and are brought to focus at the same point. What Messrs Sigma, Tokina and Tamron call apochromatic are really achromatic only focusing the red and blue wavelengths. This was done before the digital age and pixel peeping came about and so it was not so apparent with film as most people did not enlarge an image sufficiently to notice. Also there was a significant improvement in contrast and sharpness over non corrected lenses and so many photographers could see that something was being corrected so they were happy. But now with digital it's easy to look at a picture at 100% and see any lens aberrations.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Nice hack. One of my most successful adaptations like this has been an Ektar 100mm f:3.5 removed from a defunct Medalist 6x9cm camera that I picked up on eBay from no less than George Eastman House. I wrote something about this for Bob Monaghan's massive medium format website that once featured many articles about "lens hacking," or adapting lenses for cameras for which they weren't intended. Fans of that site may recall that it was a very extensive resource for information on older Bronicas, which were particularly easy to hack. That article is still out there, with a few of the images missing, but the photo of the Ektar on my Canon New F-1 is still there--

http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/medalist/

I use this lens occasionally, with another adapter, on my Canon 40D, as in the illustration at the top of this post from our family food blog--

http://familyoffood.blogspot.com/2009/01/beefening.html

[Andy Burday]

This is the best kind of blog post -- the kind that motivates me to go make something myself.

[Martin Doonan]

The thing I like, apart from the geekiness of the whole enterprise, is the fact that Tyler has used a nice photograph to illustrate the results.

(In fact, as a follower of his blog for a while, I like most all of what he does.)

[Karl Knize]

What is a steampunk lensmount? Does that mean a home hack?

[Mike Johnston]

Karl,
Look up "steampunk" on Wikipedia--.

Mike

[JonA]

Mike,

This is very interesting but thank you very much for linking to Tyler's site. I really like his photography and I wish I had his eye.