Modify an old Lens to fit my Scarlet?

[Stephen Franchek]

Hi Everyone!
I was just fishing through some antiques in my closet and I came across an old camera. I looked it up and it's not worth a whole lot (under $100) but does anyone know if it's possible to remove the fixed lens and mount it to a Red (ie my Scarlet)? Image link below

http://s1319.photobucket.com/user/sweetlittlemini/slideshow/Old Camera

I imagine it won't give huge amount of coverage, but it could be a fun project

 

[Christopher Mills]

Actually, it would cover even 6k..
it was used with 120 roll film.
now the bad news..
You need serious engineering work to take a multi cell shutter mounted lens and make a plate for an Epic/Scarlet.
I imagine you'd start with a dumb mount, perhaps in nikon, and have a view camera lens engineer make you a bellows mount to attach to it..
seems like I saw someone do that with mamiya recent medium format lenses and bellows..
No idea if you'll ever get infinity focus... but that is not always needed, as long as you can get macro thru 20 or 30 feet away

 

[Stephen Franchek]

Serious engineering work... unfortunately, I have a severe case of the dumb when it comes to stuff like that. Do you know of anyone out there who does projects like that for money?

 

[Les Dittert]

Might be easier to shoot through the bottom of an old Coke bottle. Similar 'organic' look would be the result, IMO !

 

[Robert Hart]

I think I would prefer to respect, preserve and restore a heritage camera like that. You could go the "Coatwolf camera" route, make a groundglass back for the camera in place of the film it would use, leave the door open or remove it non-destructively make a lightproof box around the rear and shoot that image. You will likely need to have a Century 4+ achromatic dioptre on the front of a 50mm or thereabouts stills lens and about 8" - 10" distance between it and the groundglass. Your image would have to be flipped in post and it would be a nightmare to shoot with. An image erecting or "flip" path could be done with prisms to also shorten the device but it would be horrendously expensive and heavy. You would probably need to use surface coated mirrors instead. It will have fixed pattern grain unless you use a wax screen. A wax screen would need to be made to fit partially within the rear portal of the camera so that the wax layer in the glass sandwich coincides with focal plane. It would also be a way of creating an effect of a shutter going off if you actually fire off the in-lens shutter whilst filming through the camera. To use the lens at all you would have to enable a shutter-open setting which might or might not be available on that shutter lens. To shoot directly through the lens by mounting it to the digital camera would be quite possible with a custom mount but pointless. With the lens at its correct distance from the sensor, there will be a severely centre-cropped image. It is unlikely to yield to a S35 sensor the sort of apparent sharpness that images made through it to the intended larger format would.

 

[Arnold F.]

I can't comment on the adaptation of that lens to your camera but if you're interested in trying "unusual" glass in general, then there is a world of Russian, Japanese and German/East German lenses to explore that can be easily and cheaply adapted to EOS mount. I've been messing with Industar, Helios, Takumar, Jupiter, etc. Lots of fun and, be careful, you can get the lens bug!