Here's a beginning; I made some 35mm portraits with a magnifying Glass, it produced some interesting, soft and diffused images. I removed the lens from my SLR and simply hand held the magnifying glass out in front of the camera body and used auto exposure.

You might try improvising a light blocking tube and f-stop to sharpen it up. I had some success using a paper towel tube taped to the camera body to help shield the stray light and I used a sheet of black paper with a hole cut in the center at 1/2 the diameter of the magnifying glass.

I do not know why, but all magnifying glasses seem to be f/2 and the 1/2 diameter size hole results in an f/4 aperture. Also head for your local Wal-Mart or drug store. Buy the cheapest reading glasses they have. I have seen them for $5.00. A 1.00 diaopter is 1000mm. 2 diaopters is 500mm and so on, then put them back to back to make a symetrical lens - if you stick two 500mm ones together you will get 250mm lens.

I use duct tape, cardboard, a cardboard tube and black paper to make it all happen. A fancier approach for large format is to take an achromat doublet from one of the Optics suppliers like Edmund Optics or similar, mount it in a shutter, mount it behind the shutter, on the film side.

You will be surprised regarding the outcome, how good it is. The lens should have a diameter of about 1 inch or similar and should have a focal length of about 5 inches for 4x5 to start.

Have fun with it.

Other Articles by John:

Getting Old
RGB & Violet
Smaller Camera Bags
Fun with Optics
Canyonlands, Utah
Scanning Old Letters
Bedke's Advice - Photoshop

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