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09-21-2021, 01:02 PM   #481
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QuoteOriginally posted by scratchpaddy Quote
... I'm still on my 16mm film lens kick. I love these things. I found another for $25. I have many, many lenses, but this is my first American lens! It's a Simpson Optical Manufacturing Co, a.k.a. SOMCO 3in f/2 (3 inches is 75mm). I'm guessing it's from the mid-'60's. It strongly resembles a small flashlight. ...
"Bonjour" scratchpaddy,

Wow ... those are great images !!! I need to try this, too. I have a few 16mm lenses laying about and need to figure out a mount for my Fuji X system (X-T3 & X-E2 + X-Pro1) ...

Thanks for the inspiration !!!

Cheers, J

09-21-2021, 06:24 PM - 1 Like   #482
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QuoteOriginally posted by Jean Poitiers Quote
"Bonjour" scratchpaddy,

Wow ... those are great images !!! I need to try this, too. I have a few 16mm lenses laying about and need to figure out a mount for my Fuji X system (X-T3 & X-E2 + X-Pro1) ...

Thanks for the inspiration !!!

Cheers, J
Merci, Jean, you are very welcome! Knowing you, you probably have one or two much like mine in your collection already. The lens formula is common enough. I found it by searching for "3in projector lens" and sorting by cheapest first.

These lenses are so much fun.

10-02-2021, 06:51 PM - 2 Likes   #483
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I wanted to try a full-size movie theater lens next. I always like cheap, and currently the cheapest easily found are old American mid-century lenses, Bausch & Lomb "Cinephor" and Kollmorgen "Snaplite". One eBay seller with a bunch of these (along with an impressive collection of vintage photography stuff) happened to be local to me, so we arranged to meet in an anonymous strip mall parking lot in north Phoenix.

He used to have a camera store, but had to close a while ago. Same thing happened to an acquaintance of his. Now he's got the inventory of both shops clogging up his house, and he's slowly selling it off piece by piece on eBay.

The lens I bought was a Kollmorgen Snaplite 4.75in f/2, but the seller also brought a 5.25in (135mm) version of the same in case I was interested. Both came from a drive-in movie theater which closed a long time ago. I was interested, so I bought both. Back home, I tackled the 5.25in one first. It's a monster. Here it is compared to the Takumar 135mm f/2.5:



Despite its size, it's the exact same weight as the Takumar. I took it apart to clean some light haze on an inner element, and measured everything while I was at it, later modeling it in the computer. It's mostly empty inside. Another very simple Petzval just like the Somco lens, but supersized to cover larger formats.



As I wrote in the diagram, it sits 57mm from the sensor at infinity focus, so you could easily adapt it to a DSLR. If you wanted to. But after testing it in the real world... I don't like it all that much.



The bokeh is nice, and the light weight makes it easy to handle despite its extreme size. That's where the good news ends.



I don't get along well with the colors it makes. It's extremely vulnerable to flare, even compared to other lenses from the '50's. It's not very sharp, even in the middle. The "Petzval swirl" occasionally appears, but it's not dramatic. Just enough to be a little annoying.



Oh well. I have wasted money on dumber things before. I think these are the more basic lenses Kollmorgen offered to theaters. There are also "Super-Snaplite" and "Cinelux" lenses which appear to be far higher quality, and are priced accordingly. After Kollmorgen exited the movie lens business in 1973, Schneider-Kreuznach acquired those assets, including the "Cinelux" name. The lenses Schneider (and its ISCO branch) introduced in the late '70's under the Cinelux name became the gold standard of cinema projection lenses for decades to come.
10-05-2021, 07:07 PM - 1 Like   #484
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I tried the 4.75 inch Snaplite on Sunday. Everything that I didn't like about the 5.25" is so much worse on the 4.75". I'm sure it's just something wrong with my copy of the 4.75". It has been dropped once or twice, judging by the state of the body, but all the elements are in the right place. Nothing is loose. I don't know what it is. There's not a whole lot to go wrong with three hunks of glass in a metal tube.

Nothing is at all sharp, ever, anywhere in the frame. Any contrast in the frame washes out the whole picture. I had to beat the heck out of the RAW files to get anything usable. It's hard to tell if these lenses are coated at all, but again, I have no idea why this one is so much worse than the 5.25". They appear identical in all ways except the 4.75" is slightly smaller.



I do like the overall rendering. It's a shame everything else about it is so lousy. After using this one, the 5.25" looks quite good by comparison.



10-30-2021, 07:26 PM - 5 Likes   #485
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Ok, I am stepping out of the bargain bin for the moment.



I bought an ISCO Cinelux-Ultra 65mm f/2 for $80 shipped from the small town of Crockett, Texas, where the lens used to project movies at the Ritz Theater there. For size comparison, I have it here with the ubiquitous Helios-44 58/2 and the miraculous Pentax FA 77/1.8 Limited. You can see it is quite a bit bigger... until you remove the fanciest, sturdiest lens hood I have ever seen. The actual optics are amazingly small.



This lens was Schneider's first use of the Cinelux name they acquired from Kollmorgen in 1973, manufactured by their ISCO division in Göttingen beginning in the late '70's. In tribute to the original brass Cineluxes of the '50's, these new aluminum lenses were made with an anodized gold finish. They were an updated version of ISCO's Super Kiptar, with 6 elements in 6 groups (they did not want to use any cemented doublets because of the extreme heat projector lenses can experience). This optical diagram is from a fascinating article written by one of the designers, Karl Macher, available here, which describes many of the technical aspects of projection lens design.


This new series of lenses was so much better than what had come before that the designers were presented with an Acadamy Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement. Unfortunately, the rest of Schneider's business was not doing so well, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 1983. They were able to restructure and continue as a business, but ISCO was spun off into its own company, and became a competitor. Schneider retained the "Cinelux" trademark, so the fact that my lens says both "ISCO" and "Cinelux" means it was made before 1983.

Anyway... that's the history. Here and now, I really love this lens! It is incredibly sharp and full of contrast. Subjects seem to jump right out of the frame.



The colors are wonderful, and bokeh is way better than it should be for a lens design which did not consider out-of-focus rendering at all.



The image does smear a bit in the extreme corners. Because of the orientation of the film (vertical for movies, horizontal for stills), 35mm movie frames are about the same size as an APS-C sensor. The fact that this lens covers a full-frame sensor is a happy accident, and I have since learned that I got extra lucky here: the 65mm lens is about the lower limit on full-frame coverage. Black corners start to appear on the 60mm lens (they were offered in 5mm increments to cover different theater sizes). Longer focal lengths have progressively larger image circles. Later in the '80's, other versions were made to cover 70mm film as it briefly came back into vogue, but they are uncommon and expensive now.



The distance between the back of this lens and the sensor is 39mm. I checked and it does not hit anything on a K-5. I don't know if the same is true of a K-1 or other full-frame SLR's. Longer focal lengths get progressively longer back-focus distances. Lenses of this series 70mm and longer should be safe for any DSLR.

10-30-2021, 11:52 PM   #486
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QuoteOriginally posted by scratchpaddy Quote
Ok, I am stepping out of the bargain bin for the moment.



I bought an ISCO Cinelux-Ultra 65mm f/2 for $80 shipped from the small town of Crockett, Texas, where the lens used to project movies at the Ritz Theater there. For size comparison, I have it here with the ubiquitous Helios-44 58/2 and the miraculous Pentax FA 77/1.8 Limited. You can see it is quite a bit bigger... until you remove the fanciest, sturdiest lens hood I have ever seen. The actual optics are amazingly small.



This lens was Schneider's first use of the Cinelux name they acquired from Kollmorgen in 1973, manufactured by their ISCO division in Göttingen beginning in the late '70's. In tribute to the original brass Cineluxes of the '50's, these new aluminum lenses were made with an anodized gold finish. They were an updated version of ISCO's Super Kiptar, with 6 elements in 6 groups (they did not want to use any cemented doublets because of the extreme heat projector lenses can experience). This optical diagram is from a fascinating article written by one of the designers, Karl Macher, available here, which describes many of the technical aspects of projection lens design.


This new series of lenses was so much better than what had come before that the designers were presented with an Acadamy Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement. Unfortunately, the rest of Schneider's business was not doing so well, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 1983. They were able to restructure and continue as a business, but ISCO was spun off into its own company, and became a competitor. Schneider retained the "Cinelux" trademark, so the fact that my lens says both "ISCO" and "Cinelux" means it was made before 1983.

Anyway... that's the history. Here and now, I really love this lens! It is incredibly sharp and full of contrast. Subjects seem to jump right out of the frame.



The colors are wonderful, and bokeh is way better than it should be for a lens design which did not consider out-of-focus rendering at all.



The image does smear a bit in the extreme corners. Because of the orientation of the film (vertical for movies, horizontal for stills), 35mm movie frames are about the same size as an APS-C sensor. The fact that this lens covers a full-frame sensor is a happy accident, and I have since learned that I got extra lucky here: the 65mm lens is about the lower limit on full-frame coverage. Black corners start to appear on the 60mm lens (they were offered in 5mm increments to cover different theater sizes). Longer focal lengths have progressively larger image circles. Later in the '80's, other versions were made to cover 70mm film as it briefly came back into vogue, but they are uncommon and expensive now.



The distance between the back of this lens and the sensor is 39mm. I checked and it does not hit anything on a K-5. I don't know if the same is true of a K-1 or other full-frame SLR's. Longer focal lengths get progressively longer back-focus distances. Lenses of this series 70mm and longer should be safe for any DSLR.
Thank‘s very much for all these Infos about ISCO and the great images!
11-05-2021, 01:49 PM - 1 Like   #487
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QuoteOriginally posted by acoufap Quote
Thank‘s very much for all these Infos about ISCO and the great images!
You're very welcome! I have done a lot of reading on these lenses. It fascinates me for some reason.

I got so excited about the results of that 65mm Cinelux that I jumped on another, newer ISCO lens. Around 1988, both Schneider and ISCO came out with an improved line of lenses. Schneider called their new line "Super Cinelux" (interesting choice, "super" doesn't sound as impressive as "ultra" to me). The original Ultra lineup's widest lens was 50mm, already much wider than what was common before, but movie theaters continued to trend smaller, demanding even wider lenses. The new Super lineup went all the way down to 24mm. Lenses 57.5mm and wider gained one or two extra elements and became quite a bit larger, while longer lenses remained very compact.

ISCO did largely the same thing at the same time, naming their new lineup "Ultra Star." Possibly to differentiate from Schneider, their gold anodizing got a reddish tint, more like bronze than brass. Their lenses also became larger and more complex than Schenider's. Quite a bit larger, in some cases. The Lens I bought is the 40mm model, and it is absolutely massive. It weighed in at 990g before adding the adapter. It's even bigger than the 5.25in (again, that's 135mm!!) Snaplite I posted about earlier. It's pictured here with the inner half of my adapter and the Pentax FA 31/1.8.



There is nothing to remove to make it smaller. It's completely packed with glass, front to back.

This lens was a little cheaper ($60 shipped from Wisconsin), but I bought it before further research revealed that these wider lenses do not cover full-frame. This is uncropped.



It doesn't take much cropping to get rid of the black circle, and of course it would completely cover APS-C, though I'm not sure how many APS-C shooters would want such a massive 40mm prime. Also, the aperture is only around f/2.5. It's not marked anywhere on the lens, presumably because ISCO did not want to admit that Schneider had an advantage here.

Within the image area it covers, it does take a nice picture. Extremely sharp, with very smooth bokeh for a wide-angle. Colors are a little cooler than Schneider, but still pleasing.



I really do like the focal length. Wide enough to make the viewer feel like part of the scene, but not too wide for subject separation. It's a shame it doesn't cover full frame. You'd think it would, with all that glass...



11-06-2021, 07:27 PM - 1 Like   #488
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Back to the bargain bin. For cost of a good lunch, I got a Triplet-5M 100mm f/2.8, made in Rogachev, Belarus in the 1980's. As the name says, it's a basic three-element projector lens. I don't especially like the "soap bubble" triplet effect, and I haven't read anything good about this lens regarding sharpness or contrast, but they're so cheap I wanted to try one anyway.



The optics come in a thick and very sturdy plastic housing, shown with the Pentax-FA 100/2.8 Macro and Takumar 135/2.5 for size comparison. Many people take a hacksaw to this plastic housing to mount it on a DSLR without clearance issues. I'm not sure why, when the actual optics assembly can easily be pressed out of the plastic tube. There's no glue. It's press-fit only.

From left to right, that's the outer tube, then the baffle pressed in behind the optics, followed by the crude cast aluminum optics housing. Not much glass here!



Now, when I first took this lens out, I got really terrible results. Everything was washed out, and I got very few workable images.



I realized the adapter I made was a big part of the problem. I just made a straight tube between the optics block and the M42 helicoid adapter I use when I'm feeling lazy. The image circle projected by this lens is massive, covering 6x7 medium format easily. All that extra light was bouncing off the sheer walls of the adapter and washing out the sensor. So, I made a new tube with a larger diameter and internal baffling to keep that extra light from hitting the sensor.



It was a big improvement! It's still not great, but no worse than expected. Even though coating technology was very good by the '80's, they didn't bother with the expense here. Imagine how much contrast you could get with current coatings and only three lens elements! But that's not the point of this lens.

The point is: bubbles!



Aside from that, it's not a remarkable lens, lacking sharpness and with lots of "glow".



Fun little experiment, I guess. Better than lunch? Maybe.
11-07-2021, 11:21 AM   #489
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Terrific shots!
I got myself a Leitz Colorplan lens, but not really a clue yet how to best attach it to my Sony A7.
11-13-2021, 08:02 PM - 4 Likes   #490
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QuoteOriginally posted by ohjajohh Quote
Terrific shots!
I got myself a Leitz Colorplan lens, but not really a clue yet how to best attach it to my Sony A7.
That's great! Which version did you get? I have read/seen many good things about this lens. One in near-perfect condition came up from a seller in the U.S. (uncommon for this lens), so I jumped on it the week before last. It was $80 shipped, which I still think is kind of a lot for a lens that you need to make your own adapter for, but after seeing what some of them can do (like the Cinelux), I get that sometimes it's really worth it.

Mine is the original all-silver version from the early '60's, with the 5-elements-in-4-groups optical design. The later version with the black nose was updated to a 6/4 design and became more compact. I have read that the original version is better, but I have also read that the newer version is better. The only thing I know for sure is that this full-metal version will not work on a DSLR for infinity focus. It needs to sit 45mm from the sensor, just inside the Pentax bayonet, but with a diameter of 46mm, the lens will not fit inside anything that attaches to that bayonet. The later black-nose version might be OK for DSLR's.

Both versions seem to have the same spiral groove cut into the body for focusing. This makes adapting much easier. You could make or find a tube that fits the lens, then stick a narrow pin or screw through the tube wall to engage the groove. Now you have focus. The pitch of the groove is 20mm, which is perfectly usable for a 90mm lens.

For my 3d-printed adapter, I made a tube with a raised spiral bump to match the groove in the lens, plus a knurled focus ring press-fit onto the lens above it.



Size comparison with the FA 100/2.8 Macro. Of course I had put the "color" in Colorplan.



For a more fair size comparison, here's the complete E-mount adapter with other "mirrorless" lenses old and new: Canon 85/1.9, Jupiter-9 85/2, and the modern Samyang AF 85/1.4.



Finally, out in the real world. Wow! Just wow. This lens is awesome. And my assistant was unusually cooperative this morning.



I never expected this kind of clarity and punch from a 1960's lens. The color fidelity is at least on par with the best multicoated lenses of the '70's and '80's.



The rendering is actually a lot like the Samyang I showed in the size comparison, which is the best portrait lens I have ever used. The sharply-defined subjects jump right out of the wonderful gentle wash of the background.



12-07-2021, 06:17 PM - 5 Likes   #491
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I drove up to Oregon to see family over the Thanksgiving week. When I go on trips, I like to take just one lens. I took my favorite projector lens so far, the Cinelux Ultra 65mm f/2. So, the half-dozen people who see this thread will finally get some non-dog pictures again.

It turns out the vignetting gets pretty severe at infinity, which makes sense: when focusing close, the lens is further away and the sensor sees a bigger circular slice of the cone projecting from the lens. Focused at infinity, the lens is as close to the sensor as it ever gets, and the sensor sees a smaller section of that cone. I more or less corrected the vignetting in post in these pictures, depending on the scene. This particular picture is cropped quite a bit, too.



Sharpness also drops off very quickly in the outer 1/3rd of the frame. The lens has a slightly curved field to compensate for the slight warping of movie film when exposed to the concentrated fury of an arc xenon cinema lamp for 1/24th of a second. It's only slightly noticeable within the 28mm diagonal frame the lens was designed to cover, but it becomes severe out beyond, to the 43mm diagonal of a full-frame sensor.

If you click for the full-size of this image, you can see the small stream at my feet is perfectly in focus in this picture, as is the tree in the center of the frame, which should not be possible with a lens of this focal length and aperture. The curvature worked in my favor here; it's like a tilt-shift lens. But it only works for half the image: the top of the tree is already falling out of focus again.



OK... it wouldn't be a scratchpaddy post without at least one dog. My mom's dog, Grizzly.



I don't regret my choice to bring only this lens. There's not much sun in western Oregon in the winter, but it's really special when it occasionally appears. The way this lens draws the light and the colors really makes me happy, even with the edges falling out of focus. Plus, it's a tiny lens, great to walk around town with.










12-19-2021, 05:03 AM   #492
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That 65mm cinelux really shines!
02-02-2022, 12:53 PM - 2 Likes   #493
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Some great images here: inspirational. In fact, it kept us going during the many months spent building DELTA - an archive aimed at corralling information about using enlarger lenses on digital cameras. Recently we made the decision to enlarge the archive to include more than enlarger lenses. It now includes entries for almost 1700 helicoid-free enlarger, projector, industrial, macro and repro lenses.

Currently only 45 lenses have been reviewed and ranked, and DELTA (which is in beta) only knows 400 projector lenses, compared to almost 1000 enlarger lenses. I would welcome any involvement from forum members to spot errors and omissions and suggest new lenses, or supply information about lenses already in the database - including serial numbers that let us build a picture of production over time. It's a free resource, and it's important to me that it's not just a big rickety wiki - on the other hand, (editorially supervised) the more knowledgeable contributors, the better the resource will be.

DELTA Version 0.85: Digital Enlarger Lens Test Archive – 16:9

Version 1 will go live on a different platform, and by Version 2 we should have pictures of, and shot with, lenses. Here forum contributions are especially useful.
02-04-2022, 12:38 PM   #494
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QuoteOriginally posted by 169 Quote
Some great images here: inspirational. In fact, it kept us going during the many months spent building DELTA - an archive aimed at corralling information about using enlarger lenses on digital cameras. Recently we made the decision to enlarge the archive to include more than enlarger lenses. It now includes entries for almost 1700 helicoid-free enlarger, projector, industrial, macro and repro lenses.

Currently only 45 lenses have been reviewed and ranked, and DELTA (which is in beta) only knows 400 projector lenses, compared to almost 1000 enlarger lenses. I would welcome any involvement from forum members to spot errors and omissions and suggest new lenses, or supply information about lenses already in the database - including serial numbers that let us build a picture of production over time. It's a free resource, and it's important to me that it's not just a big rickety wiki - on the other hand, (editorially supervised) the more knowledgeable contributors, the better the resource will be.

DELTA Version 0.85: Digital Enlarger Lens Test Archive – 16:9

Version 1 will go live on a different platform, and by Version 2 we should have pictures of, and shot with, lenses. Here forum contributions are especially useful.
Hi and thanks for your post ... I would be very interested, and I have several enlarger lenses of varying focal lengths that I need to play with ... so, green light for me.

Cheers, J
02-04-2022, 05:19 PM   #495
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Gaeat - I'll be in touch. Delta now knows 564 projector lenses.
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