Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Life to Old Lenses

So some may call me evil, and some may even call me nuts..
While others will think it is terrible that I have ripped apart old folders for their lenses, but here's the thing. The cameras are basically just decoration, and for me, that's not much of an option.  I am also considering selling a few of my cameras.  Mainly the ones I do not use, but that's a hurdle I'll climb when I come to it.

Anyway, one of the cameras was a Kodak Autographic Folding Brownie No. 2a, which has a Baush And Lomb Rapid Rectilinear lens.  The stops listed on the lens if 8 16 32 64.  The thing is that is the old style Universal Stop.  ƒ/16 is US 16, so US 8 will be ƒ/11.

So it's a very easy conversion to understand.

I have tested these lenses out prior to actually committing them to film.

A Lot Of Snow
"Snowy Post" - Kodak Rapid Rectilinear Lens
Ilford MGIV Fibre based paper - Dektol 1+3
Paper Test

Getting the Monorail to the site to setup the shot was fairly easy.  Slippery somewhat, but not too bad.
I had a yellow filter and a polarizer on the camera, oh and a fashioned lens hood out of a black plastic thingy.

"Flow" - Kodak Rapid Rectilinear 114mm ƒ/11 @ƒ/16
1/15s Exposure - Ilford FP4+ 125ASA

I really think that this lens is far sharper than I originally though it would be.  I was actually hoping for some anomalies that never manifested themselves, which is actually rather unfortunate.

But perhaps that'll change when I give the Achromatic lens a go!  It's different than a Rapid Rectilinear.  The Achromatic lens is basically a cemented Doublet lens, but instead of the lenses being separated (front and rear elements) by a pocket of air, they are actually cemented together.

Should make things interesting!

Until next time.  Keep those shutters firing!

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