Hi, I was playing with the idee of using some lenses of my enlargers to put on my LF camera. I haven't tryied it yet as I 'm still looking for a system to make the right opening speed. maybe other people already did it or know more about it.

is the quality better or the same of enlarger lenses, (I have 50mm 85mm, and would like to use them as wide angle lenses indoor) also concerning the diafragma, do you use the exact reading?

thanks for giving me your input

-- stijn (s.saelens@email.com), December 13, 2001

Answers

You will find a lot of answers to this in the archives. Pat

-- pat krentz (patwandakrentz@aol.com), December 13, 2001.

Don't bother looking in the archives for this answer. Unless the enlarging lenses are wide angle designs (90% aren't) they will not serve as wide angle lenses. Most enlarging lenses have an acceptance angle of around 50° - the 50mm will give an image circle of around 50mm, the 85mm will cover about 90mm, when focused at infinity.

-- Wayne DeWitt (wdewitt@snip.net), December 13, 2001.

thanks, how can I find the right angle of enlarger lenses? (1 of the enlarger lenses is actualy used for 6x9 enlargments, maybe it could work, not?) if there is nothing mentioned on the lens concerning ange of coveraged, how can you know the right angel?

thanks

-- Stijn (s.saelens@email.com), December 14, 2001.

Enlarging lenses are designed to cover negative formats. Assuming standard designs (i.e., not wide angle etc) 50mm lenses cover a 35mm frame, 80mm lenses cover a 6x6 frame and a 150mm lens would cover a 4x5 negative (i.e., approx 162mm diagonal at a distance of 150mm from the negative). Angle of coverage can be calculated from that.

Enlarging lenses make practical lenses to use for macro work. Remember circles of coverage increase with bellows extension at for macro work, there is a lot of extension. Enlarger lenses are also fairly well corrected for the range they are going to be used in. So if you use a 150mm enlarging lens to make a 2X macro picture of a flower, you are using the lens in the range it was designed for (try mounting the lens backwards when you get to larger than life size). You can slip enlarging lenses into a Copal 1 shutter with a simple adapter ring that is available from Calumet for approx $30-40. Good luck, DJ

-- N Dhananjay (dhananjay-nayakankuppam@uiowa.edu), December 14, 2001.