Don't Throw Away Your Enlarger

[Johnny St.Ours]

Just F-ing around with my old Beseler, I came up with an awkward alternative to the $2600 Master Diopter, the "Major Shallow" I think I'll call it. Turned the close focus of my Angenieux 25-250 from 6 1/2' to about 6 1/2" inches.

Sorry, my intial tests got me so fired up, I forgot to clean the thing, and it's been sitting in my crawlspace for about 7 years (haven't printed photos in a while)

Here's some video:
http://www.piraeushd.com/videos/MACsample.m4v

Maybe I'll work on making a nicer looking support rig...

 

[Curran Giddens]

Trippy!

Would be perfect for shooting an acid flashback from the 70's.

 

[Johnny St.Ours]

anybody need a 70s trip flashback scene? I'll get out my lens cleaner.

 

[oretac]

LOL

Looks good
Very interesting

 

[Dan Hudgins]

aspheric lens?

aspheric lens?

Some condenser lenses are aspheric lens, but those don't look like they would be.

Better to use a opaque projector lens with three elements that's corrected, you could stack two of them, the 36" ones may be large enough for your 25-250 front end. With two you would get 18" or so, and at 250mm being 18" should give you a high magnification.

Most zoom lenses do not macro on the full range, so using a multi element lens in front can let you both zoom and hold focus on small objects.

 

[davidave]

Can I ask a totally off-topic question: Where did you get the music?

 

[David Rasberry]

Pretty neat.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Pretty "acid"!!!

 

[Johnny St.Ours]

10 years ago, I built a dolly out of 3 schwinns, and kept the rainbow banana seat for the operator to sit on- now that was pretty acid- not so much in the picture, but the cars driving by as I got my tracking shots of a guy walking the median got quite a show.

After the movie I donated the dolly to the mermaid festival in Brooklyn. It worked much better for them.

This condenser I believe is more useful than that, but still, just the beginning. I might give the opaque projector lens a try too, thanks.

I always say, "necessity is the mother f**ker"

Truth is, my partner in film these days has a full set of Cooke S4s, so necessity isn't exactly what comes to mind. I can focus on anything 9" from the body and it's Cooke crisp. This is just the spirit of play, an exercise in stretching the brain.

The music came out of the FCP can.