G.R. Nylander Photography: New Light Through Old Lenses

Nikon D850 with the rapid rectilinear lens about 150mm ƒ4 made by Bausch and Lomb Optical Company.

I decided to play the mad photographic scientist and make some Frankenstein like adapters to try out some old brass camera lenses that I had in my collection. I'm certainly not the first time a photographer to stick an old brass lens on a modern-day digital camera but I thought it would be fun to try. A hundred years ago many camera lenses were made of brass and had no optical coatings on the glass elements. I had 2 old lenses I wanted to try out that I thought might work.

The first lens is a rapid rectilinear lens about 150mm ƒ4 made by Bausch and Lomb Optical Company, it's set in a Kodak automatic shutter. The lens was attached to a No. 3 Cartridge Kodak Camera that was manufactured by the Eastman Kodak Company from 1900 to 1907. I acquired this camera along with a number of other old cameras about 5 years ago.

The second lens I had is an old Beck Symmetrical lens about 250mm ƒ8 that I have owned for about 40 years or more, it has no shutter and the aperture blades are long gone. I made some drop-in waterhouse stops. The Beck lens manufacturing company has been around since the 1850s They were a British optical manufacturing company based in London UK and produced a wide range of optical products: microscopes, telescopes, eye test glasses for opticians (optometer lenses), other optical equipment, including camera lenses and cameras.

Since I had no way to focus the lenses I used a close-up focusing bellows attachment. I also needed some kind of adapter to mount the lenses on to the bellows which was made for a Nikon camera. I didn't want to spend a lot of money as I was not too sure how it might work, so found some cheap stuff on Amazon. I was able to screw the Beck lens right into the M42 to Nikon adapter which I thought was pretty amazing. For the Bausch and Lomb lens I had to do a bit more figuring out as the lens flange is much smaller, luckily I had some small screws and I was able to drill some holes in the lens adapter using parts of the old Kodak camera, in the end, it ended up holding the lens in place.

I only put this together recently and have included a couple "test" photos. I will try and photograph some other subjects to see what use I can practically make from them. So far they look not too bad for lenses about to hit the 120-year-old mark. Of course quite soft at wide-open apertures they do seem to improve in sharpness stopped down with a smaller aperture. Perhaps the interesting way to use them is to use them wide open or stopped down just a little to try and capture a softer look to the photograph.

There you have it old meets new and is new once again.