Last November, I acquired an Intrepid 4x5 camera from my fellow photographer, Russ Young. I’ve already written about my re-acquaintance with large format back in April. A month or so ago, I found an old Kodak Kodex No. 1 lens/shutter assembly in a drawer. I’m pretty sure that it came from a Kodak Pocket 1A folding camera that was in bad condition, so I just saved the lens from it. I never thought about putting it on another camera until recently. My first thought when I looked at it was, “Will it work with 4x5?”
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| Lensboard with 32mm center hole. |
It needed a lens board though, before I could do anything with it. My buddy Bill Pivetta cut a lens board with a 32mm center hole for me from a sheet of gray plastic that I had in my garage. After some final sanding and trimming, I mounted the lens and attached the lens board to my Intrepid camera. When I looked at the ground glass, it appeared that the lens does in fact, cover 4x5. A few shots with the lens confirmed that. The photos below were taken on Arista Ultra 100, at apertures of f/22 and f/32, with a time of 1 to 2 seconds.
This lens is a 111mm Meniscus Achromat, with numbered aperture settings of 1,2,3,4. The shutter speeds of T, B, 1/25 and 1/50 are sufficient for low ISO film. Now, what are those numbered apertures? From what I’ve found 1= f/11, 2= f/16, 3= f/22, and 4 = f/32. This is NOT a fast lens, and was likely found in the least expensive version of the camera. At the maximum aperture of f/11, the image on the ground glass is quite dim, and even more so at f/22! Of course, this lens was used on the original camera with a reflex viewfinder (which are not bright, either), and the camera had set positions for subject distance. Using this lens on a bight day isn’t too bad, though.
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| Yes, it covers 4x5! f/22 @ 2 seconds |
The whole point of this exercise was to see if I could use this lens on my 4x5, and I was successful in that. There are better lens/shutter combinations available on those old Kodak folders that may yield better results. This lens, at 110-111mm is on the wide end of 4x5, and I’m looking at my Kodak Vigilant Six-20 with its 101mm lens and Kodak No. 1 Supermatic shutter and maximum aperture of f/4.5 and I think I’ll have to try that one next on my 4x5. In fact, while writing this, I took a half hour to remove the lens from the Kodak Vigilant Six-20 and mounted it on the same lens board. It fit perfectly, and now to do some more testing.
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| Now, to try this one out. Stay tuned. |
The fun thing with 4x5 is that I am able to easily experiment with old lenses, and it takes just a sheet or two of film to see the results. There are a lot of old folders out there with beat-up bellows and extinct film formats. Why not give it a try?
