Old Feel Lens on 5D

[Ben Rubinstein]

Hi,

Looking for a 'turn of century' look lens that I would be able to use on a 5D. That dreamy and etherial painting kind of barrel lens on LF look. Looking for approx 50mm FOV though slightly wider or longer would also work. For shooting a specific street project. I know that it's been done by people, I've not been able to dredge up the specific threads in this forum unfortunately.

Any help much appreciated!

 

[Asher Kelman]

Jim Galli has one and also "Little Green Men" to serve him. Do a search here!

Asher

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Did a search on Jim, read all his posts here, can't find anything specific to my question, do you have a link Asher?

 

[Mike Shimwell]

Ben, have you thoght about a lensbaby? or picking up an dold manual focus lens for something and an adaptor?

Asher is pointing at Jim's threads. Have a look here.

Mike

 

[Deleted member 55]

The Canon EF 50 f1.2 L USM will give that when shot wide open and shot at close range.

Here is an example:

I added a little vignette and antique color in post.

 

[Mike Shimwell]

The Canon EF 50 f1.2 L USM will give that when shot wide open and shot at close range.

Here is an example:

I added a little vignette and antique color in post.

I thought for a moment that was lens vignette! So much for L glass...


Mike

 

[Deleted member 55]

I thought for a moment that was lens vignette! So much for L glass...


Mike

Actually I get a little from my Canon MR14EX ring light but I like more!

 

[Daniel Buck]

I'm with Will, I think what you're going to want is a really fast lens, and some vignetting/softening.

You could either do that practically (which would be my first attempt) with a tube of paper to extend the lens shade so that it vignetts, and maybe shoot through some nylon mesh (or a really crudded-up UV filter) to get the un-coated soft look of older lensses. Experiment with holding other things infront of the lens too! You could also look at "building" your own single or doublet lenses, that could be fun too.

Or do it digitally with various methods.

Not many lenses on small formats can give the strange looks that some of the old lens designs that cover larger formats. Jim will be your man to talk to though, for sure!

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Not really looking for a wide open look though. Can older barrel lenses be mounted somehow on a 5D?

 

[Deleted member 55]

Hi Ben. The best way is a 4x5 with a universal (iris clamp type) lens mount mounted to a lens board and a Hong Kong EOS to 4x4 adapter from ebay.

The cheep and dirty way is with a cheep ext tube, some cardboard tubing and some duct tape!

Use two cardboard tubes that slide in and out to adjust focus.

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Got any suggestions on the lens Will? I like the idea but other than the petzval which I don't like, the world of turn of century barrel lenses is a closed book to me. Looking for something that will give me that soft glow even stopped down but without it having the more clinical look of a dedicated soft focus lens.

 

[Daniel Buck]

Got any suggestions on the lens Will? I like the idea but other than the petzval which I don't like, the world of turn of century barrel lenses is a closed book to me. Looking for something that will give me that soft glow even stopped down but without it having the more clinical look of a dedicated soft focus lens.

probably the lack of lens coatings.

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Has to be said that the Lensbaby Composer with Single Optic would pretty much do what I'm looking for and it's kinda made for the job which counts with me, I hate having to DIY solutions (and use them in the field) when you can buy one ready made if that makes any sense. Yup I love to cop out

What I want to see is what the lens looks like stopped down on a large DOF scene so that you don't get the circle of blur around the focus point that seems to be the signature of the lens. Wondering whether it will still look as 'old look' or sharpen up too much. Unfortunately no one seems to have pics like this to show. The still life comparison on the lensbaby site doesn't give me that much of an idea.

 

[Jim Galli]

On Ebay, do a search for Vest Pocket Kodak. One sold this AM for 18 bucks. They have a 75 - 85mm achromatic meniscus lens that when used wide open will give a dreamy soft glow. They are achromatic so you shouldn't get too much color fringing. You'll have to figure out a mount though. Buy the cheapest sacrificial barrel that is close and cobble the antique lens into it after you've knocked the original glass out. Or perhaps extension tubes would work.

Another possibility is some of the f0.95 glass that Rodenstock Heligon made for industrial machinery. I have several out in the future project box in the garage. No one wanted to pay much, so they're chilling right now. They are VERY heavy and again, it's up to the creative person to cobble something together to get the glass in front of the sensor.

A simple 99 cent magnifying glass will make nice images, but color fringing is a headache. No CS4 aint that good. Better to start with a glass sandwich that fixes that problem at the git go.

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Shooting for B&W Jim ;-)

Had thought of folding cameras but I'd not have the faintest clue where to start to look, thanks for the pointer!

Been looking at pages and pages of lensbaby photos on flikr. Hundreds of photos of exactly the same effect. YAWN! I'm wondering whether stopping it way down to kill that out of focus circle will give me a regular single uncoated lens in an easy to mount and focus package.

Or am I just being too boring Jim?

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Been a while, posted about it on my usual thread on the images forum but no response.

I bought a Lensbaby with a single lens optic. Because the lensbaby design does not allow for a flat field of focus and without it all you pretty much get is the 'lensbaby effect' which I personally find tiresome, I discovered that you have to stop down to f22 pretty much to get a flatter field of focus. You still have a sizeable area of the corners which are soft. The lens also sharpens up quite a lot at f22, amazing how much detail a single uncoated optic has on my 1Ds mkIII.

Here is the result of my first test of the lens:

Here also is a link to a Zoomify version of the image so you can see what it looks like closer up. I'm a bit suspect of zoomify, the image it shows first is very soft, then the middle images are too sharp, I think it's sharpening as it downsizes, anyway 100% looks right though. Focus was on the 2nd set of steps.

http://www.studio-beni.net/SteppingSouth.html

Does it look 'old lens'? I think it does, or at least what is percieved by the great unwashed as 'old'. Going out to shoot with it again tomorrow.

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Does it look 'old lens'? I think it does, or at least what is percieved by the great unwashed as 'old'. Going out to shoot with it again tomorrow.

Hi Ben,

It does mimick the 'old' ones with respect to edge aberrations on a large image circle. However, it does so while adding more DOF than those large format lenses are capable of (despite their small apertures of f/45 or f64).

So the answer is, yes and no.

Cheers,
Bart

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Facinating Bart, can you explain to me how it is possible that the same focal length stopped down would provide less DOF? Or were they a lot longer focal lengths? I can understand abberation and diffraction causing an entire image to go softer but not how a lens can have less DOF.

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Facinating Bart, can you explain to me how it is possible that the same focal length stopped down would provide less DOF? Or were they a lot longer focal lengths? I can understand abberation and diffraction causing an entire image to go softer but not how a lens can have less DOF.

Hi Ben,

Yes, it's the longer focal lengths needed to also create an image circle that's large enough, the focal length scales with 'sensor array' size. When we consider 50mm as a 'normal' focal length, because it produces a perspective similar to human vision, a medium format's camera normal lens would be something like 80mm. With the large view cameras, e.g. an 8x10inch, a 350mm lens can be considered normal, giving a similar perspective (longer FL but larger image circle, so similar shooting distance, thus shallower DOF, unless stopped down considerably more, f/5.6 then becomes about f/32 to match DOF).

The actual calculation is much trickier due to lens design, and diffraction effects, and lower output magnification for large formats, but in general to achieve an acceptable exposure time larger formats are shot with relatively wide apertures giving shallower DOF. For static scenes one could use long exposure times and narrow apertures though. View cameras can of course also use lens tilt to compensate for shallow DOF at shorter distances.

Part of DOF can be recreated in postprocessing, by using e.g. a lens blur filter in Photoshop together with a (simulated) depth map of the scene. There are also programs, e.g. Helicon Focus Pro (intended for focus stacking), that can approximate a depth map calculated from several different focus distance shots.

Cheers,
Bart

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Thanks Bart, I was being slow in forgetting that the older cameras would have a far longer focal length as 'normal' and hence less DOF.

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

I'm finding this lens pretty difficult to shoot with, for a start, even at f22 only about the middle 50% is 'sharp', the rest is just blurred out. I hadn't realised quite as much but in the first image none of the tree is sharp and the latter two pictures, both kids are very blurred. It does help towards the more dreamy feel but I think I'm going to run some prints to see whether the effect suits larger or smaller prints. Apart from that the distortion is horrific and very weird, these pictures have corrections but at some point I just gave up.

Anyway, all from the Old City Jerusalem today.

The famous 'Baatei Machsei', built by Sir Moses Montifiore a century ago as housing for the poor.

A child runs home from school clutching the 'Matza' traditionally eaten on the minor 'Pesach Sheni' festival (not that you can see the detail of it unfortunately).​

Not sure about this next one, the wife likes it, I'm not sure.

Ariel
​

Just a point of interest, the DR of the 1Ds mkIII, especially with a low contrast lens is absolutely incredible, these shots were all taken in full middle eastern midday sun. Mindblowing.

 

[Umesh Bhatt]

I have one of these lenses called Sima 100mm lens. Its a cheap plastic lens that gives a kind of effect you are looking for...(I think).

Here is an example:

Its a nikon mount though....try ebay...

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Another from yesterday that to be honest I'd forgotten to process, I forgot I even took it until now. f22, 1/100 handheld and snap focused (stopped down of course) in about a second, suprised I got it right to be honest. Poor man could'nt walk more than 5 yards before pausing for a rest but he was determined, he just kept on going. A lesson in determination that I was priviliged to have seen.

Looking at the photos that I took yesterday during the course of just a few hours I think it shows how crucial it is when working on a project like this to know your subject (in this case the Old City) so well. I've had these compositions in my head for years, they just didn't fit in with the feel of the other project. Now I can finally make them work.