canon dslr to 4x5 wista field

[Nino Loss]

Hi,

I'd like to attach my canon full frame dslr to my 4x5 wista field. Do you have any suggestion regarding the lens. I thought of an 50mm enlarger lens. But which lens would fit which lens board?

[dan_fromm2]

Hmm.  I don't know which Wista you have.  The 45 DX's minimum extension is 51 mm.  It probably won't focus a 50 mm lens on a flat board to infinity.  On a recessed board with a Canon DSLR hung on the back of the Wista, probably not because the depth of the Canon body + the depth of the adapter will add extension.

Also, a 50 mm enlarging lens can't be counted on to cover much more than 43 mm.

What do you want to accomplish?

[rodeo_joe1]

17 hours ago, dan_fromm2 said:

Hmm.  I don't know which Wista you have.  The 45 DX's minimum extension is 51 mm.  It probably won't focus a 50 mm lens on a flat board to infinity.  On a recessed board with a Canon DSLR hung on the back of the Wista, probably not because the depth of the Canon body + the depth of the adapter will add extension.

Also, a 50 mm enlarging lens can't be counted on to cover much more than 43 mm.

What do you want to accomplish?

Indeed. Most good quality 50mm enlarging lenses have a 39mm Leica thread that would be difficult to fit to a standard LF lensboard. 

Also, the short back-focus of the lens would preclude infinity focus with the 5x4 bellows closed up and an adapter for the Canon attached to the back.

A few LF camera makers made kits of sliding backs for the specific purpose of adapting DSLRs to them. An enterprise that died the death years ago and was doomed to failure from the outset; due to a lack of suitable lenses, and that the DSLR body 'well' plus adapter shades any attempt to get substantial lens shift unless the lens used has a ridiculously long back-focus. 

[Glenn McCreery]

Back in about 1984, I adapted a reverse mounted Canon 50mm FL lens to a 4x5 lens board by epoxy gluing an adapter ring to a suitable diameter hole in a lens board. I used this lens to take extreme close-up photos of moving water drops for an experiment. I used the lens with either a roll film adapter or a Canon F1 mounted on the back of a Linhof Kardan Standard. The focus was hit or miss because the drops were rapidly moving through the field of view, but we did get successful photos to work with.  Now days, I would use a DSLR with a macro lens for similar photographs and forget about using a view camera. I would assume that the OP is planning on taking close-up photos with his setup.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Glenn McCreery