New camera….. sort of!

I was at the studio shooting a plate for a client this evening and in between senstizing plates I made a little camera body for one of those TV projector lenses.

The focal length is about 3 inches, so too short to fit to any of my studio cameras, and the lens is so wide its problematic on my 5×7 camera. I had an old 1/4 plate back and plate holders so I just kept adding plywood until the focal distance was the most pleasing for central detail.
I’ve removed two of the inner elements (no different to when all five were in). With another taken out leaving two elements it makes a 12 inch f4 lens and very very soft.

As you can see its pretty soft set up like this, not surprising as it has an aperture of about f1!

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Yes its a “Like a…”
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Where those brass screws are on the lens body, I reckon I can fit a tripod mount.
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And the wooden quarter plate back from an old Lancaster camera.
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I did shoot one plate, but it was way over exposed. I think I might need to make a shutter! or maybe make some apertures and get it back down to f4, and that might improve the definition. There was one insignificant washer aperture made of plastic in amongst the elements but I took that out so I guess I could make that one smaller if I needed to.

So just a bit of fun… for now.