A question for the DIY crowd... is there any practical use for an older manual focus zoom camera lens in ATM or spectroscopy. something in the 52mm diameter, 85-200mm focal length?
A bit more detail, I'm liquidating my Dad's camera equipment, 1960's era Petri film camera and accessories. I still have a off brand lens, Sun Hi-Tele Zoom, 85-210mm f4.8, and hate to just toss it. Has no real value to me (or anyone on ebay ) so it is dead weight. It won't fit anything else without a special adaptor, which is hard to come by.
Location: '34 South' Young Hilltops LGA, Australia
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The front elements will probably be a 40mm diameter achromatic doublet which if separated from the rest of the optics, could be mounted in PVC drain pipe to make a finderscope.
Bojan,
So the bayonet adaptor should come off and the body have a screw thread to attach an adaptor? Like the T-rings do for telescopes?
So it has bayonet? OK, I see.. Petri..
The linked adapters are for M42, but there are others available as well.
I am pretty sure the breach lock mechanism can be removed and some sort of EOS adapter fitted. Of course, this operation may need some machining..
The important part would be to retain control over iris and to reach the infinity focus. http://photo.net/classic-cameras-forum/00Qtfz http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-99.html
I guess I'll hold onto it for a little bit longer, see if I can find time to look into adapting it to Canon, it may only fit the EF-S style mount as the last element is not flush with the body.
I'd like to see what kind of images I might get (terrestrial that is). I keep hearing that any Japanese glass, even old ones, are still really good. My Dad saved everything, I still have the original documents and sales docket... from a shop in Okinawa.
Am I understanding correctly that this is too slow for the aperture and focal length to be a guide scope even for wider field images?
Yes, many of those old lenses are quite good, I am using a lot of Canon FD lenses with excellent results.
I have one Sun, 200mm f2.8 prim elens, still lkeeping it for something, but it is not exceptional.. the antireflective coating is not very good. However, when I close it down to f4, it is acceptable even for AP.
Kevin,
For the DIY spectroscope crowd....
The 135mm Zuiko/ Pentax lenses are popular for the DIY Classical spectroscope builders.
I have a collection of old Zuiko lenses in my "box"
Don't want to drift too far off topic but would you break the lens apart and use specific pieces or keep as is?
I have an itch to get into spectroscopy in the near future and have been reading up on the gratings and solutions out there. I'll have to spend a bit of time looking up DIY spectroscopes in the forum and see what gets done.
NO!
We use the lenses "as is".
There's a lot of useful info on Christian Buil's website - I can't link with the iPad! Sorry.
Have a look at the project section in IIS for the Classical design.
A big problem with most of the old lenses is that they dont handle the back reflections off a CCD chips surfaces, be it the glass, the filters, the silicon or the micro lenses.
The old silver and cellulose film absorbed most of the light that fell on it and did not suffer as much from back refelection, so the lenses simply didnt need to deal with the problem.
So the light gets scattered forward inside the lens and then back again onto the CCD causing loss of contrast at worst and bad reflections at worst.
For this reason there are only a few old lenses that happen to work well with CCDs.
I chose a camera system based on the "Value" I ascribed to the large collection of 1970/180's lenses I had collected over many years owning 35mm cameras, darkrooms etc
This was a mistake - not one of the zooms was any good on a CCD camera, ignoring the lack of automated focussing and aperture control - optically they were simply poor due to their lack of internal anntireflective coatings and probably also because they were never the finest optical quality in the first place !
They were all terribly slow and optically none of them were anywhere near as good as the cheap kit lenses supplied with the camera, and that brand still had another 2 tiers of lenses available abive Kit Lens - Kit, SemiPro and Pro.
Fortunately the camera system had some other great benefits for my particular interests that I hadnt considered before the purcase so my decision through sheer luck turned out to be a good one !
Its sad to have to reconcile old treasures like this to the scrap bin, I sentimentally still keep too many of mine in a box because I find it hard to part with them - they were bought on a low income and while at Uni, when I struggled to pay for for my hobby and they represent a lot of good old memories !
In some cases I look at the lens and remember the days experience when I shot some memorable (or often less than memorable) B+W photos and then spent time (often wasted) in the dark room processing them !
That is something to consider when attempting to re-purpose older things. Sometimes technology is its own worst enemy.
BTW, the bayonet ring came off quite simply by loosening the 3 set screws in it. That revealed a ring much like a moonlight focuser with a groove that the set screws would set into. The optical tube is threaded, extends about 1/4" from the body and is 1.254" in diameter. Photo attached...
Seems like there are still possibilities for it if I can adapt to a M42 male thread... then it should fit a T-ring adaptor, correct? I just need to watch the spacing and not allow it to get to big.
) so it is dead weight. It won't fit anything else without a special adaptor, which is hard to come by.
Thanks Ken,
