Lenses can be surprising!

[Paul Kay 44]

This photograph:

may not be world beating, but read on. It was taken on a Seacam housed Sony A7II at 200ISO. The lens is a manual focus which because I could not fit a gear, was fixed at one focus setting. Its focal length is 3.75" (~95mmish) at infinity and it was originally designed for stereo photography and intended to cover 3" x 3" format (75mm square) although it is not a macro lens.

But what is quite extraordinary is that the lens was made my Grubb of Dublin (world renowned telescope maker) in 1865, so it is an over 150 years old photographic lens. We have come a long way but not, perhaps, quite as far as we might think. It won't stand up to absolute comparison with any modern macro lens of course, but it is quite extraordinarily good considering its age (and condition!).

[troporobo 235]

What a fantastic idea!  I would not have thought to try such an experiment.  Agreed, it’s quite a good performer in this situation. I’d be very interested to hear about how you mounted it and see a photo of the setup.  

[Paul Kay 44]

The lens I used has a thread which is quite close to Leica screw mount (as used in enlarging lenses). This allowed me to fit the lens which is not unlike an enlarging lens onto a Leitz (New York) focus helicoid bought from an auction at a reasonable price - they crop up from time to time. I used a couple of Leica screw mount extension tubes (readily available and cheap) to roughtly adjust focus, then the helicoid to adjst further and popped it all onto a Sony A7II using a Metabones adapter. Then it was just a matter of fitting it into a housing (Seacam) and adjuting the port with extenders as usual. I tried fixed focus but it wouldn't be difficult to fit a gear onto the helicoid and have adjustable manual focus. The camera was set to show red on in focus edges which worked pretty well. I'll take a photo of it and post idc.

[tobyone 14]

Looks liked you jumped through a few hoops, but got great results. Sometimes moving a camera is the best way to focus.