Century-old lens on a fancy digital camera

Over at the Submitterator, Daha points us to Timor Civan's fantastic photos taken with a 1908 camera lens mounted on a modern Canon EOS 5D. Lovely. From Cinema5D:

I am a DP and photographer, 90% of the time i use my 5D for stills, professional and not. I have an upcoming photography project that needs a vintage look. Initially i was going to shoot it on 4x5 large format film, but found the equipment and processing cost prohibitive. My friend, a Russian lens technician, who loves nothing more than to frankenstein equipment, was assisting me in building the 4x5 camera. After we abandoned the 4x5 solution, i put the project on back burner. This morning he called me into his store on NYC. He has something for me.... He found in a box of random parts, hidden inside anther lens this gem. A circa 1908 ( possibly earlier) 35mm lens. Still functioning, mostly brass, and not nearly as much dust or fungus as one would think after sitting in a box for over a hundred years. This lens is a piece of motion picture history, and at this point rare beyond words. So i say to him, "Wow... what do you have in mind?" he smiles, and says, ( in the thickest russian accent you can imagine) " i can make this fit EF you know..." my eye twinkled, and then 6 nail biting hours later,he had it finished. My Russian Lens technician is a mad scientist and he took what sounded like an angle grinder to the lens to make its clear the flange distance and the mirror....... This lens' value is unclear. its sort of on loan. It's the only lens of its kind on a 5D... or any digital for that matter.

"102 year old lens on a 5DmkII"

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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toresbe

http://www.flickr.com/photos/astroman-photo/3836070153/ shows another Cine-Velostigmat lens on a GH1, dated 2009.
Anonymous

Hacking is an art form that has been practiced since the beginning of time.
Using a broken rock to scrape an animal hide to protect your feet is hacking.
The crazed tinker in the back room with a grinder sounds reminds me of people that I used to hang out with. We could get pretty far from the original purpose when we put our minds to it…
Anonymous

Comments about doing this in Photoshop or GIMP take away from what is special about photography in general. While photoshop is a useful tool, and as much a part of the photograph as the lens and camera, it takes a bit more mental work and the outcome more genuine when the end result is captured in camera.

Photoshop is the photographers modern bag of tricks; but one must have the right photograph in the camera to work with. While I don’t think this old lens needed to be modified itself (it could have been mounted on a custom flange without modification), I do think the photographer and his lens hacking friend have a good niche art. The proof is in the compositions made.

This is excellent, modification of an antique lens or otherwise; and it is genius in that it was done in the camera.

Cheers!
ScavengerCat

Gorgeous photos, great find on the lens. Unfortunately, some of the commenters seem to be so mindblown over these that they feel the reproduction of this effect is beyond the realm of Photoshop. First of all, anyone with a decent knowledge of HDR would see that this would be precisely the wrong effect – HDR’s strength is balancing shadows and highlights, and these have deep blacks that devour all detail and completely blown out highlights. The only shot that looks remotely HDR is the angled clock tower, and that sort of image quality can be had with any good lens under the right lighting conditions.

Also, depth of field need not be duplicated so painstakingly that some “3D matrix” analysis would be required. Nor would a “fuckton” of work be needed, either. The idea to recreate this look in post processing would be to impart a similar feel, and any of these could be duplicated so closely that any in-depth analysis would be overkill. The power of photography as art lies in the immediacy of its effect, and this impact could be faithfully duplicated by any artist with a Wacom tablet.
GeekMan

What a gorgeous mod.

Yes, hacking is an art. More people need to know how to fix the things in their day to day lives to better suit their needs.
xzzy

I ran across that link a few days ago (which is good, because it appears the site is down for the count, and there were several images to view) and was instantly jealous.

We’re used to seeing the early 20th century as blurry and scratchy, and when you see modern life the same way it’s a bit jarring. There are photoshop methods to reproduce the look.. but nothing captures it quite the same way as a truly old lens.
Anonymous

here’s another method for this (large format lens is not as old)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lookseeseen/3503857897/
Anonymous

I’m not convinced this effect couldn’t be accomplished perfectly in Photoshop or Gimp. xzzy suggests it’s not quite the same but I’m inclined to believe any visual effect can be applied with enough work on a filter. I can’t see why the photographer purports to admire the historical qualities of the piece if he’s excited by a process that destroys those qualities, especially if the effect can be mimicked with software.
- telverston
  
  Even if indeed it could be accomplished through manipulation later in an editor, you would have to be comparing it to the source as you did it. How could you compare it to something that doesn’t exist in the first place? You have to be looking through the lens to see what you are framing. A lens and sensor combo like this hasn’t ever existed before.
  
  Nice shots.
  
  I got some neato shots by holding my phone’s camera up to my pair of binoculars. Wow, and yes I could maybe fake them now using photoshop somehow. Just remember:
  
  Go outside, the graphics are amazing!
- Anonymous
  
  nay-sayers …
- Anonymous
  
  that’s the problem it seems. People would rather use software instead of the real thing. Who cares if you can do it with software when you have the hardware that can produce the same thing.
- dole
  
  I don’t think it’s impossible to recreate hardware effects like these through filters, however, I’d imagine it’s a lot harder getting the exact same results out of the same filter every time, as opposed to just using that particular lens. Stuff like hipstamatic, sure, you can get those analog effects across all your photos, but usually applied heavy as shit.
- KremlinLaptop
  
  Doing it with the camera is better than doing it in the lab/post. Yes, this can in theory be recreated with enough work in editing software and done well enough that to a casual or non-casual glance it’ll look very authentic.
  
  Or you could pop this amazing lens on your camera, take a hundred photos, adjust colours, contrast and exposure like with any digital photo and be done.
cinemajay

THAT is photo-hack badassery right there.

Nicely done!
Anonymous

120 year old lens on a Pentax K10D:
http://www.pentaxuser.co.uk/forum/topic/lens-review–ross-anastigmat-196mm-f-8–on-pentax-k10d–11295/p-0
Anonymous

What is a DP?

It used to stand for Displaced Person.
- Donald Petersen
  
  What is a DP?
  
  Director of Photography. What they used to call a Cinematographer. Head of the camera dep’t on a movie or TV or commercial shoot. That kinda thing.
websorcerer

This soft lens reminds me of the photos taken by Gertrude Kasebier in the late 1800s

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=kasebier&fi=author&sg=true

Her portraits had this ethereal quality.
Anonymous

I had done this several years ago. I still use it. Works great!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmstringer/sets/72157609560187421/

This lens is an enlarger. It states that The F4/40mm is for 24mm x 24mm neg. Componons are enlarging lenses.

I have had this little lens for over 20 years and i do not know whay i kept it. I did not have a DSLR camera back then.

I used a lens cap and made a hole through the center and placed it on the top of my Sony 18-70mm Lens as well as several other lenses that i have in my possession.

Whit that setup that i am using to hold the lens, you get some Vignetting due to the size difference between the base lens Aperture and the fixed Aperture of this lens.

From what i have learned, having the Componon on the end, you add +40mm to the Focal Length and +4 to the Aperture and F/Stop. It has a very good Bokeh and a very selective Depth Of Field when in used in conjunction with the other lenses.
baccaruda

Getting it right in-camera is worth more than recreating it later. Immediacy of the effect is important, and either method requires skill of the photographer or the digital technician, but rarity and authenticity count more. They *feel* real when compared to the alternative.
It’s why vintage unrestored cars are so valuable, it’s why replicas aren’t worth the same as originals, it’s why digital photography is popularly discounted as being worth less than film photography (“you’re not really creating anything, you can start over whenever you like”), it’s why so many people feel that analog is better when it comes to music.
PS: I am a digital tech & designer and while I’m good at what I do, I am grateful for the appreciation it’s given me for (other people’s) photographs that need less help in PP. Ideally, at some point the skill sets meet in the middle; I started learning about photographic composition, aperture/shutterspeed/ISO starting with PP but some people learn photography first and then learn PP later.
SKR

Impressive, most impressive.

I found an old 500mm telephoto with a screw mount. Way back when, it took quite a bit of effort to find the screw mount adapter for bayonet mounts. However, once you get that adapter a whole world of beautiful old manual lenses opens up.

@scavengercat, the power of the digital camera lies with being able o view the effect immediately, no wacom required. Think of the lens as a hardware filter.
Anonymous

I would love to see what popping this on to a 5D mkII to shoot some video would accomplish. Super excellent art-hack!
millrick

i love this hack
it’s a commitment to happenstance that relies more on compositional skills than on technical excellence to create a piece of art.
yes you could imitate this image quality using software, but it’s the photographer’s commitment to exploring the limitations of the lens that makes this work unique
- Lobster
  
  I love it too. Enough that I feel like calling it a “hack” diminishes it. It’s art.
artiefx0

You’d need a high dynamic range image to recreate that accurately in Photoshop, and even then, it would be a lot of work. Just doing a curves adjustment and gaussian blur a lighten layer wouldn’t look realistic, especially on the color photos.
- Anonymous
  
  Besides needing HDR, there are also going to be depth-of-field effects that can’t be emulated exactly without having 3D geometry for the picture. It’s not going to be exact.
  
  Still, I will agree that a filter could probably get close enough for most people not to be able to tell, maybe even close enough that it’s not humanly possible to tell the difference, with the right lens/f-stop selection.
  
  Anyway, this is just damn retro-cool! Quit knocking it.
- KremlinLaptop
  
  True, it’s be either done with HDR and gimmickery I can’t even begin to fathom … or isolating and working on multiple pieces individually to get it ‘right’. Essentially you’d be spending a fuckton of time getting it done when the lens does it with literally the press of a button.
Dean W. Armstrong

The old lenses before the anastigmat have great flaws in them that you can exploit for fantastic images. A simple lens will have plenty of spherical aberration that will soften stuff just so … nicely, it brings a bit of romanticism to the mind, whether or not you are thinking of that. Julia Maragret Cameron’s images come to mind. Some of the lenses were convertible: take one of the two out and you get a different focal length. On the 8×10 Rapid Rectilinear I used for my flatbed scanner camera project the iris was a series of thin metal plates with holes punched in them that you inserted in a slot in the center of the lens; this produced different aberrations than if you put them in front. Half the fun was the flaws the lens & the weird sensor gave you.
Andy

Photoshop is graphic design, not photography.

THERE, I SAID IT.
darn

I’m definitely impressed with the craftsmanship involved with fitting the >100 y/o lens to the EF mount, but for what purpose?

The hipster vintage look is getting a little old. In the end, all we have are the images produced by the camera. I see nothing new or game changing in the example photos posted. If you didn’t know any of the backstory, you’d dismiss the work as irrelevant.
penguinchris

I’ve got mixed feelings as well. I occasionally add vignetting and film-effects (color and grain) to my digital photos if I think they’ll add something, but I do it very, very subtly so as to not be overbearing.

The problem with these images is that what they look like is someone taking regular digital photos and adding an overblown and not particularly well done vintage effect to them. They really don’t look like they were taken with a vintage camera.

If what you’re after is a vintage look, you can’t just stick a vintage lens on your new camera. You have to process the image to make it look like it was actually taken with whatever camera the lens was made for. It just doesn’t work otherwise.

That said, video taken with this lens might work better. It would still look too “new” though, without adding some grain at least.

There are a lot of people (you can find them on flickr) who take old lenses and attach them to new cameras. The most effective of these tend to be lenses that have distinctive properties – particular distortions, bokeh characteristics, etc. This particular lens doesn’t really have anything distinctive other than the extreme vignetting.
narrowstreetsLA

Now all it needs is a–oh wait, it doesn’t need anything. This is just perfectly awesome!
arkizzle / Moderator

“..I feel like calling it a “hack” diminishes it. It’s art.”

I feel like you diminish “hack” :)