LPL C7700 enlarger - DSLR attachment for use as a copy stand?

[Stephen Lloyd]

The odds of me ever using my old enlarger again as astronomical. Rather than Ebay or give away I am keen to try using it as a copy stand. I have a Nikon D850 which I know comes with slide duplication attachments for 60mm macro lenses - which I'm also keen to try as my old Coolscan fluctuates between dying, dead and almost dead at will, despite having it in at Nikon. Some things are just old and start to fail beyond repair. I also have a 105mm macro, not it's shorter sibling, which is a lens I like a lot so no plans to change that. Converting my enlarger to a copy stand and using a daylight lightbox below it has many attractions - if I can do it and if it works well of course. Has anyone done this - comments on what may be needed, or pros/cons from experience?

[spacecadet]

35 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Interesting, I might be using the term 'process' lens too loosely.

Oh yes, I don't mean enlarging lenses. They would need contrast and resolution of course. Mine are some long focal lengths (up to 210mm) in odd mounts that were obviously meant for reprography. They turned up on a market stall the same place I used to get my reel-to-reel tape recorders. I use the 105 hot-glued to the 'Tran bellows and it's as good as my cheap enlarging lenses. But I should have asked for that macro lens for Christmas!

[wiskerke]

4 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Yes, good example but I haven't come across it in practice with my lenses so it's interesting to know what you've discovered in your large testing sample. MTF charts for Rodenstock 'Apo' lenses don't seem to show this quite but it's true that they don't need stopping down as much as standard enlarger lenses to give optimum performance. The Imacon Precision II that I have uses an f4 75mm Rodenstock Magnagon which I think is fixed at f5.6 but there's no markings. It's certainly sharp. I don't have one but I've always assumed that the 75mm Apo-Rodagon lenses optimised for 1:1 would be best, in fact I think that optically they are very similar to the Magnagon, if not the same.

 

These are process lenses and it's a different matter for camera lenses where using a lens wide open gives good 'bokeh' and pre-digital allowed pictures to be taken in circumstances where it would otherwise be impossible, corner sharpness often didn't matter. Cartier-Bresson's pictures of the Velodrome d'Hiver show this nicely, but there are many other examples. That 90mm Sony macro looks exceptional.

Hold your horses about the Sony 90mm.

Yes it looks exceptional on DXO, however read on.

 

Here are 2 good tests of lenses at 1x and the Magnagon is included:

the old one: https://www.closeuphotography.com/sharpness-test-1x

and the newest one (Dec 29 2020): https://www.closeuphotography.com/1x-test-2020

- Where the 90mm Zony is being dissed as one of the worst, one day after I bought it. 😂

But otherwise the whole site has pretty good descriptions and tests or at least comparative tests, which is exactly what I"m doing, just with a different subject.

I have long looked for a 75 Apo Rodenstock. Found out that there are actually two versions, a 1x and a 2x. And that maybe the 2x is better at 1x than the 1x. Huh??

After that I turned my attention to the Minolta Scan Elite lens, but by then I had been too late by a year. Besides the Elite only has an image circle covering half frame 35mm at best. (It's a scan lens for 35mm film after all.

 

Because it turned out speed is one of my requirements, in my case the Zony 90mm is not a bad choice. So at the moment I am testing to optimize it's performance in my setup.

Contrary to Robert OToole (that guy from closeuphotography.com) I don't think baked-in lens profiles are evil if you have the rest of the process in place. However, the profiles are good, but not perfect. Not a huge deal, but still.

 

wim

[Harry Harrison]

3 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

Here are 2 good tests of lenses at 1x and the Magnagon is included:

the old one: https://www.closeuphotography.com/sharpness-test-1x

and the newest one (Dec 29 2020): https://www.closeuphotography.com/1x-test-2020

I think you may have shared a link to that site before, it's extraordinary. I'm particularly in awe of the 'stacking' technique (as in lenses rather than focus).

 

Pssst. Don't tell anyone but there are both types of the 75mm Apo-Rodagon on UK ebay at the moment, each for a very good price. I don't know how Brexit affects sales to the EU though.

 

 

[wiskerke]

3 hours ago, spacecadet said:

Oh yes, I don't mean enlarging lenses. They would need contrast and resolution of course. Mine are some long focal lengths (up to 210mm) in odd mounts that were obviously meant for reprography. They turned up on a market stall the same place I used to get my reel-to-reel tape recorders. I use the 105 hot-glued to the 'Tran bellows and it's as good as my cheap enlarging lenses. But I should have asked for that macro lens for Christmas!

 

You have probably found out that it's very easy to focus these process lenses, because longitudinal chromatic aberration is usually quite visible. If everything is in focus the color fringe is absent and the whole thing is neutral, but a slight bit of of focus turns red or green. Like enlarging lenses, they are designed for flatness of field.

Common focal lengths are 150mm; 210mm; 240mm; 300mm. Very often the aperture starts at f9.

The biggest ones in my drawer come from the huge Klimsch camera and are marked Rodenstock-Klimsch-Apo-Ronar. I still have some other bits from that camera too. It could function as an enlarger as well.

 

wim

[spacecadet]

8 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

 

You have probably found out that it's very easy to focus these process lenses, because longitudinal chromatic aberration is usually quite visible. If everything is in focus the color fringe is absent and the whole thing is neutral, but a slight bit of of focus turns red or green. Like enlarging lenses, they are designed for flatness of field.

Common focal lengths are 150mm; 210mm; 240mm; 300mm. Very often the aperture starts at f9.

The biggest ones in my drawer come from the huge Klimsch camera and are marked Rodenstock-Klimsch-Apo-Ronar. I still have some other bits from that camera too. It could function as an enlarger as well.

 

wim

Yes, I noticed the fringing on the chart tests I did, but it's not so easy with a real subject at f11. I have sometimes had to focus with an LED torch. Mine are indifferent unbranded English lenses, 105, 152 and 210, f3.5 and 6.3, in very odd mounts, one of which I had to cut off. The 105 deteriorates markedly below f11 so DoF is a problem.

[wiskerke]

14 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

I think you may have shared a link to that site before, it's extraordinary. I'm particularly in awe of the 'stacking' technique (as in lenses rather than focus).

 

Pssst. Don't tell anyone but there are both types of the 75mm Apo-Rodagon on UK ebay at the moment, each for a very good price. I don't know how Brexit affects sales to the EU though.

 

Ah yes that's a good price. Go ahead, I'm not going to get it. Though part of me does somehow still remembers the crave 😂.

 

How does Brexit affect the sales? With slapping on some import duty I presume.

It's not a ham sandwich, so they will not confiscate it.

(I'm not proud of that btw - I think it's a disgrace. But yes they did ask for it. And they got it. So we all have to live with the consequences. No use crying over spilled ham sandwiches. Google Stoicism. However the Stoics believed it was essential to distinguish truth from fallacy through reason.)

/rant mode off

 

wim

[Harry Harrison]

4 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

Go ahead, I'm not going to get it.

Thanks, I'm tempted but 'crave' is the right word, I don't really need it. I did stumble on a 50mm Apo-Rodagon f2.8 and it seems very good indeed on the Fuji/Illumitran combination so I've settled on that even though it is not designed for extreme macro, around 2:1 on the APS-C Fuji I suppose - or should that be 1:2, anyway around half-size.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Harry Harrison