Saturday, September 19, 2020

Antique Digital Camera II

A few days ago I wrote about converting my 100-year-old ICA camera, adding an old brass lens, and adapting it so I can shoot digital images with it. In order to do that I had to remove the lovely lens from the ICA camera, a double anastigmat Hekla 13.5 cm ƒ6.8 lens. From previous conversion prototypes and experiments, I had bought a budget-priced close up focusing bellows. I also bought some lens adapters from M42 to Nikon F lens mount. I used these lens adapters to attach to the old lenses. The black lens is the Hekla 13.5cm lens from the old ICA camera. The brass lens is a lens that came off a No.8 Kodak Cartridge Kodak from the late 1890s I think once owned by Victoria newspaper legend Alec Merriman's father, Tom. The focal length of the brass lens is about 150mm its says ƒ4 but really is ƒ8 as Kodak used a simple numerical system back then. Before the modern-day f-stop system was adopted in the mid-1920s, things were a bit more complicated, as a variety of systems were in use to express lens aperture. The old Kodak lens is more like a soft-focus lens even when it's focused critically sharp Anyway, I hope to try out these lenses on various subjects and see what kind of photographs that I can make with them.

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