[Marcus Rowland]

I picked up a VERY strange manual lens in a job lot of old equipment that I think originated with a repairer - it's labelled as a Trans Tele-Macro 1:3.5 f=135

It's about 85mm long, 55mm diameter, and the rear stem is 33mm diameter. It seems to focus about 60mm back from the rearmost element. It looks like it has been modified at the back of the main body, possibly by the removal of some sort of lens mount. It feels a bit rough there and there are tool marks. What's left is slightly wider than the thread of an M42 or T-mount. The rear cap looks like it is a perfect fit, so I'm guessing the rear element is meant to protrude like this.

My guess is that it's intended as a bellows-mounted macro lens. Unfortunately I don't currently own a bellows, and the central bore of my macro tubes is too narrow to take it. I'm thinking about rigging some sort of mount with sliding sections of tubing to test it, though bellows don't actually seem to be very expensive and it could be time to buy some.

Anyone know it at all?

Some photos below:

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Last edited by Marcus Rowland; 02-03-2017 at 11:44 AM.

[marcusBMG]

Looks to me like a "anyname" 135mm with a c mount adapter on it. That should come off leaving a more standard camera bayonet/thread.

Does it focus?
c-mount anyway...

"A C mount is a type of lens mount commonly found on 16 mm movie cameras, closed-circuit television cameras, machine vision cameras and microscope phototubes. C-mount lenses provide a male thread, which mates with a female thread on the camera. The thread is nominally 1.000 inch (25.4 mm) in diameter, with 32 threads per inch, designated as "1-32 UN 2A" in the ANSI B1.1 standard for unified screw threads. The flange focal distance is 17.526 millimetres (0.6900 in) for a C mount.." wikipedia

[Marcus Rowland]

No, it doesn't focus and isn't c-mount - the remains of the mount are much wider than c-mount. That's why I'm pretty sure it's designed for bellows use.

---------- Post added 02-03-17 at 01:37 PM ----------

Forgot to say that the front filter mount is 49mm.

---------- Post added 02-03-17 at 01:56 PM ----------

On closer examination I think that the mount that has been removed was M42 or T-mount after all; the remaining stub seems to engage with the thread of a T-mount but there isn't enough of it left to use safely. What I may end up doing is remove the inner part of a T-mount and fix the outer part to the lens with plastic filler. It won't be pretty or easily interchangeable, but it ought to work.

[Marcus Rowland]

The stupid part of this is that it looks vaguely familiar - I have an idea I saw something like it advertised in Amateur Photographer back in the 1970s or early eighties, from one of the companies that sold things like fisheye converters, sideways mirrors for candid photography, etc.

[Marcus Rowland]

I've ordered a bellows (from China, so it'll be at least a couple of weeks) and I think I've worked out a way to fix it securely without plastic filler - I'll put a couple of rubber grommets the right size around the rear tube inside the T-mount.

[Marcus Rowland]

Got the bellows and fitted the lens with a mount, some pictures I took this evening - reduced in size due to photobucket. Even with maximum extension magnification is less than 1:1, but results are better than with a zoom and extension tube (hardly surprising) and with the subject MUCH further from the lens for a given magnification.

All are at f8; With the first three I was operating the shutter by hand, having forgotten what I once knew about bellows photography in the decade or so since I last did any:

Extended about half way




Fully extended



For the last two I finally remembered to get the remote control, and I think the results are a little better.





I need to try again at f16 and f22, which will give better depth of field. My initial feeling is that it's as good as any other fairly basic prime lens - I'd probably do better with a better lens, but my prime lenses at present are a fisheye, a 35mm which isn't suitable for manual bellows, and 500mm - not the best for macro work.