Reversing Lense?

[john grunke]

How do you reverse a lense? Never seen this configuration.

Is the front of the lense attached to the lense board or is the lense

actually inside the camera? Are some lense better for this than others? Thanks.

[steve_feldman]

John,

 

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I've reversed a lens for macro on 35mm, but never on LF.

 

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The procedure for 35mm is add a "reverse ring" (it's a double male

thread adapter ring) to the front of a 50mm lens on the camera. Screw

on another 50mm face to face. Open up both lenses to widest opening

and focus with the body side lens. Auto metering will work OK. Depth

of filed is VERY SMALL.

 

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I know this doesn't help much. But it's all I know. If you find out

LF reverse procedure let me know also.

 

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Thanx,

 

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-Steve

[chris_jordan3]

i imagine it'd be somewhat difficult to do with LF, considering that

your shutter would be inside the bellows! maybe the idea would be to

screw the lens off the lensboard and reverse the front and back

elements. for what, i have no idea, but that'd be what you'd have to

do...

 

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~cj (Seattle)

[roger_urban3]

With a lens mounted on a lensboard, simply turning it around and

attaching it is all that needs to be done to reverse it. Then, you

unhook the bellows just behind the lensboard, set your f/stop, and

use your lenscap or hat for a shutter.

[david_rose3]

I have not tried it, but you could probably reverse the lens on the

lensboard and drill a small hole in the board to pass a cable release

through. Light seal around the hole with black silicone and you are

in business!

[armin_seeholzer]

Hi John

 

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Sounds for me a bit strange for LF!

If it is for makro then think new! Edward Weston and many older stars

did just take their normal lenses for those shoots cloused the lenses

down to f32, f 45 or f64 and make your shoot!

Or if you need better quality then buy one of the cheapest new lens for

example a 150mm G-Glaron from Schneider optimiset for 1:1 and you have

more sharpness up to f 32 but then starts the diffraction to make every

lens go down with resolution.

 

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Good luck!

[julian_bell1]

I use a 60mm componon mounted backwards on an old shutter for 4 x 5

macro. It works very well, see

http://www.webstar.nl/~job/rosepage.html

[dan_fromm1]

Well, the 100/6.3 Zeiss Luminar, a macro lens if ever there was one,

is threaded at both ends so it can be mounted on shutter as best suits

the working magnification. Its useful range is 0.8:1 to 8:1, it wants

one orientation below 1:1 and the other above, if I have things right.

If not, send corrections.

[ted_brownle]

John,

 

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It seems ridiculous to simply reverse the lensboard, as the shutter

is inside the camera. I would remove the lens from the board & use a

threaded capture ring in the filter threads. this isn't as quick as

turning around the lensboard & I probably wouldn't do it for just a

shot or two, but you would at least have access to the shutter.

 

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If I couldn't find an off-the-shelf threaded ring, my first visit

would be Steve Grimes.

 

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Good Luck!

 

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PS: This has also crossed my mind at points in the past

[pete_andrews]

If the lens is mounted in a number 0 or 3 shutter, the front and rear

threads are the same, and the front and rear components of the lens

can be simply unscrewed and swapped over.<br>If you're going to do

this, make sure that you don't lose any of the shim rings that are

sometimes fitted between the lens housing and the shutter. And don't

forget to swap the lens back after you've finished the macro

job!<p>Number 1 shutters have different thread diameters at the front

and rear, so you can't swap the lenses over in these shutters.

[michael_briggs2]

High-quality nlarging lenses make high-quality macro lenses. If you

already own an enlarging lens, this can be a low cost approach.

 

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Schneider (and maybe others) makes an adapter that accepts any lens

with the standard 39 mm enlarging lens thread, and which screws into

the front of a #1 shutter. This is a good setup when the subject is

roughly a few times larger than the image. The Schneider part is

numbered 92-056002.

 

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When you want the image to be larger than the subject, it is better to

reverse the orientation of the enlarging lens, so that the lens is

used for the optical reproduction ratio for which it was defined.

This is easy to do with an adapter made by Nikon and Rodenstock (and

maybe others), which adapts the 40.5 mm front filter thread of many

Nikon and Rodenstock enlarging lenses to the standard 39 mm thread for

enlarging lenses. In this configuration you use two adapters

between the lens and the shutter. On some lenses you may also need to

cover the port that normally illuminates the f-stop number with a

piece of opaque tape.

 

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I have used these adapters with enlarging lenses of focal lengths 63

mm and 105 mm. Don't forget the bellows extension exposure

correction, which can be quite a few stops.