75mm/f-1.9 in Alphax #3 for <25!

<p>Hello Everyone,</p>

<p>For months past I have noticed a bunch of oscilloscope cameras offered on e-bay for hundreds of dollars each. Not surprisingly they don’t sell. No one wants to buy these useless 50s-60s era industrial cameras. Now they are being offered at buy-it-now prices <$50 and <$25 .</p>

<p>Most of these cameras have <strong><em>75mm/f-1.9</em></strong> Wollensak lens in an Alphax #3 shutter. They won’t cover 4x5 at infinity (make a 6cm circle on 4x6 film), but they are optimized for 1:1 reproduction at short working distances where they <strong><em>do</em></strong> cover 4x5 . . .and max aperature is f-1.9. I’ve gotten two at $25 each, and close-ups seem fine to me. Had to work some to dismount/disassemble them from the camera though.</p>

<p>The shutter alone is worth the $25 as a project item.</p>

<p>If we don’t buy up all these old shutters at thrift-store prices, they will eventually get junked —and they will be lost to LF photography forever.</p>

<p>I have one of those 75/1.9 Wollensaks. :-) It came out of a Tektronix O-scope camera I bought at auction long ago and then eventually scrapped (painfully obsolete). I seriously doubt anyone would junk the lenses/shutters of these things, as they're so easy to remove. They'll just get redistributed and end up in collections of "project" stuff.</p>

<p>Early in the last decade of the previous century (1992-ish) I bought ten of these cameras for !~$5 each. I salvaged the lenses and scrapped the rest. Each lens had a metal collor on the barrel of the front and rear cell that wouldNot come off. I applied heat and harsh solvents along with heroic torque. finally I brought them to a local gunsmith and he reluctantly chucked the front cell of one lens in his lathe and cut off the collar. It was easier than we thought and the glass was untouched, so he did them all. </p>

<p>I sold them off over 18 months or so at the old Houston Camera Show for ~$50 each. I still have two. There ia an exaustive analysis of these lenses and their limitations in another forum, LF dot info.</p>

<p>For a while now I had thought about purchasing one of these lenses and somehow affixing it to a revers lens macro adapter ( ya know where you screw a mount onto the filter thread of your lens.) then attaching it to a bellows for my 135 Film SLR Camera. I thought that would be the best use for it, but i am still not sure If it would be able to focus to infinity that way.<br>

So if it has a 6cm image circle at infinity , I would guess it would work best at infinity on type 135 film or 120 in 6x4.5 format. Tho I do not know what type 120 film camera it could be used on or how.</p>

<p>Hrmm... something to be very careful of is if the o-scope camera actually has a decent lens. The ones that I have seen, for Tektronix and the like, have a fairly poor lens assembly and shutter. This could have been the model that I bought, looked like a 70's, maybe, early 80's era model. Lots of injected molded plastic all throughout and the camera/lens combo was a joke. Think along the lines of those $5 cameras you used to get on a give-away or something.<br>

Maybe, with the older ones, say, 50's and 60's, you might get an actual lens barrel assembly made from brass. But, you better check those auction pics really carefully or else you'll end up with a "hunk-of-junk".</p>

<p>Can't edit my last post... Any ways, did an eBay search and there are quite, as usual. If you are serious about purchasing one of these be sure to ask for more pictures of the lens assembly and interior shots of the camera and o-scope mount. This is to determine if you are getting one that has an actual dedicated lens. In the beginning, say the 50's and into the 60's they had a dedicated lens as that was basically the way to do it. The slow-scan CRT's were dim and the available (Polaroid) film stock may have not been the best. As time went on the CRT's got brighter and the film got better. The lenses became simpler and the manufacturing process shifted from stamped metal parts to injected molded plastic. That is what you have to watch out for. By all means, buy and tinker away, just choose carefully.</p>