Antique Camera Simulator
Panasonic system camera with Extra Rapid Aplanat image by S. Erik Bjernhage (Image rights) |
Antique cameras may be charming collectibles. But light-tightness, shutter reliabilty, and smoothness of other mechanics are some conditions needed to revive these items for practical photography. The availabilitiy of appropriate film might be another issue, when no rollfilm back fits as replacement for the original film plate holders of an antique camera. An alternate approach to nostalgic photographing can be the Antique camera simulator. That's a construction based on a modern type SLR and an old type lens or lens/shutter unit. Finding a way to combine modern camera and old lens is a combination of luck and intuition. An old focusable view camera lens might fit on a lens tube extension for the camera, and a way might be found to mount it on this base. The more common non-focusable old lenses might be mounted in a similar way, but onto a macro bellows for the camera, or a special tube-in-tube construction might be tinkered of appropriate plastic tubes. Of course in most cases the mounting of an antique lens onto a SLR for 35mm film means using just a part of the image size available with the lens. But this is the central part of the lens's image plane. In most cases this is the part of the image which is projected quite sharp, undistorted and color corrected. Thus the usage of old quality lenses might result in images of surprising fine quality.
Cosina Hi-Lite EC SLR with Ross No. 6 Symmetrical image by Uwe Kulick (Image rights) |
Pentax SLR with B&L Rapid Rectilinear in Ball Bearing Shutter on home-constructed focusing facility image by Nesster (Image rights) |
Minolta XD with Goerz Doppel-Anastigmat in Automat shutter on Novoflex macro bellows image by Uwe Kulick (Image rights) |
Minolta SLR with Rectilineaire Extra Rapide on extension tubes image by Uwe Kulick (Image rights) |
Nikon D800 with Rapid Paraplanat III and imaging sample images by Dirk HR Spennemann (Image rights) |
Links
- Antique Camera Simulator project by Dirk HR Spennemann
- news related to that poject on fstoppers-com [1]