Mark Stein, Author at phillipreeve.net

The best thing about life is that sometimes there is a cat. A close second is characterful lenses to depict it. The Kowa 50/1.3 is a more common optical design than old Petzvals, thus its rendition is closer to, say, a Canon 50/1.4 M39 or FD, but with busier bokeh.

As many readers asked for and looked forward to a follow-up to the Projector Lenses article—one that explains how Mark carried out the conversion and offers some hints and guidance so you can try it yourself—he kindly put together this second piece on the subject. All photos and text are by Mark; the article design and layout are by me, Martin.

So, I’ll hand it over to Mark…

Welcome back! This post seeks to introduce you to the possibilities of adapting old 16mm-film projector lenses to Evils, SLRs and even Rangefinders. The aim is using these old treasures for creative photographic expression. But whilst the charm lies in the resulting pictures more than the resulting object, feel free to wake your inner fine mechanic! Mine has definitely been fast asleep, and yet, through immersion, I graduated from first putty attempts to a solid interchangeable mount setup, the recipe of which I’ll share.

So here we go, I guess.

Sample Images

Continue reading Projector Lenses – Part 2 – Adapting Old Petzval and Projection Lenses to Modern Cameras →

Introduction

Martin recently reviewed Lomo’s replica of a Petzval lens. I commented, perhaps slightly snidely, that vintage Petzval lenses are still around, often for less money, and often with better centre sharpness – and certainly with a vast choice of models and thus rendition nuances.

Martin suggested I share my knowledge in an article. And like an inverse Spice Girl, one became two. This one seeks to introduce you to the weird magic of Petzval lenses and their widespread availability from old cinema film projectors. The next will look at adapting them, and indeed any old projection lens, to a modern-day camera.

So here we go, I guess.

All pictures were taken on full-frame evils: a Sony a7r2 and an a7cr. Some were cropped; all were adjusted for proper blacks and whites according to ancient darkroom principles. None had additional sharpening or aberration correction applied.