There seems to be a abundance of barrel mount process lenses available very cheaply now as the process camera world goes digital. It is tempting to consider mounting these in shutters for use on a view camera but high price of shutters with a throat diameter large enough to accomodate most such lens can negate the low purchase price of the lens.
There are some good process lenses available that will fit into the shutters that can be salvaged from oscilloscopte cameras. The shutters, #3 Elgeets and Alphaxes, generally sell for $20-40 cettainly an attractive price compared with the $200-300 that a Copal#1 seems to fetch these days. I've fitted two Wollensak process lenses onto Alphax shutters recently. Both the lenses and shutters are good 'Murcan products so no metric tooling was needed to cut threads. The first was a 10 1/4" f10 Apo Raptar - didn't have the option of a front mount here as the original iris was unusable when the lens came to me. These element groups on this lens are 1.44" diameter and they fit easily into the 1.75" bore of the Alphax shutter I had; only a pair of reducing bushings was needed. The collet which I made to hold the bushings for final machining greatly simplified the work. In this case, I reproduced the rear-flange to diaphragm distance in the rear bushing, the faced off the fron bushing to make the flange separation distance in the bushed shutter the same as the original lens barrel. The second lens was a 13" f10 APO Raptar. The front element will screw directly into the second Alphax shutter which I had. I machined a 0.08" thick spacer to prevent the rear of the element group from interfering with the shutter. A short extension ring was needed so increase the flange separation in the bushed Alphax to match the larger distance in the orignal barrel. The parts for either of these lens/shutter combinations can be had for well under $50 - not bad at all for sharp lenses with wide coverage circles. _______________________________________________ Cameramakers mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://rmp.opusis.com/mailman/listinfo/cameramakers
