Dutch Workshop - Long Lens Edition and Some Classics

[Erik Lund]

JA cooking  ,,, Bjørn behind some of the long lenses 

_EGL9249 by Erik Gunst Lund, on Flickr

Shot with a newly chipped 35mm 1.4 Ai'ed - The Lens is f/1.4-f/22 and lens Ai-ring f/1.4-f/16,,, fast lenses are not meant to be stopped down,,,

Anyway we are having a great time with JA at the Dutch NikonGear headquarters

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Day #1 spent with upgrading the old types of focusing adapters (for the long Nikkor lens heads 400, 600, 800, and 1200 mm). These adapters needed a helping hand from Erik to become operational with the newer Nikons and adding a CPU chip made them even meter successfully.

My suitcase held "only" 2*CU (old) and 1*AU (new adapter), plus 400/4.5 and 600/5.6 lens heads. The long 800/8ED stayed at home lest my checked in luggage should  be massively overweight.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Erik is on the last stretch of the CPU conversion of the very old 35 mm f/1.4 Nikkor-N. To save delicate souls of our NG community from agony,  very few details will be given. Suffice it to say that Erik needed a big dinner to regain strength after the modification was completed.

[Fons Baerken]

Lovely, btw i see JA rinsing spaghetti, i had expected 'boerenkool met worst'.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Good question ... but here is Master Erik busy at work expanding the near focusing capability of my 20 mm f/3.5 Nikkor (52 mm filter thread). He needed an extended lever in the lens and a quick raid into Jan Anne's drawers netted us a ball pen just with the right dimension. That signalled the demise of said pen for writing purposes. In return, I got a CPU-modified nice lens able to focus to < 20 cm instead of the former 30 cm, which for a short focal lens confers a tremendous difference.

[John Geerts]

Super, great job !

[Akira]

To save delicate souls of our NG community from agony,  very few details will be given.

No worries.  You already reported the conversion work on the venerable Noct!

Erik's works are always joyous to watch.   

[richardHaw]

do those focusing adapters get stuck easily? thinking of buying some and selling them

[Bjørn Rørslett]

do those focusing adapters get stuck easily? thinking of buying some and selling them

One of the CU adapters had impact damage (dropped?) and needed minor modification & repair to allow smooth operation. The main issue with the early adapters is their tendency to bind in focusing when the long and heavy lens heads such as 800/8 and 1200/11 are attached. Nikon designed the newer version AU-1 to overcome this issue. However, although AU-1 does not bind and provides a nice filter slot for rear filters, it is also much heavier and less easy to operate hand-held (one might say it is lunacy to work with these contraptions hand held, and be correct, but the human mindset operates in mysterious ways so sometimes one tries the impossible).

The extremely non-linear (actually, rotational) movement of the aperture stop-down lever in these adapters confers a disadvantage for modern cameras and Nikon lists all these old lens/adapter combinations as incompatible with current cameras. However, we found a way to overcome this problem with minor side effects by judiciously special programming of the adapter CPU.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Here are the "short" lenses we worked on after their surgery had been completed.

The 20 mm f/3.5 Nikkor had its near limit extended to 19 cm. The very old 35 mm f/2 Nikkor-O from the '60s are now AI-modified (shortcut method, literally). The almost as old 35 mm f/1.4 Nikkor-N from early '70s has miraculously survived its internal surgery to become CPU-enabled, like its two siblings.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Erik is test shooting his "new" 600 mm f/5.6 Nikkor + CU after extensive modifications. Typical testbed environment kindly provided by Jan Anne.

Subject is the sheep outside Jan Anne's farm house.

[Fons Baerken]

I think i have that same type tripod Erik is using,Gitzo 3541xls? What is the ballhead mounted on it?

[Anthony]

With a nice souvenir of Scotland in the foreground.  I am surprised that there is so much of it left.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Jakov arrived with a Rodenstock 42 mm f/0.75 and unrealistic expectations of what the lens could be made to do on his FX camera. This resulted in a very unusual (for him) sad face ...

[Jan Anne]

I think i have that same type tripod Erik is using,Gitzo 3541xls? What is the ballhead mounted on it?

Hi Fons, it's a Gitzo GH5380S head on a GT3540LS tripod.

The head is made to sink in partially inside a 3 series systematic tripod and entirely inside the 5 series models, it's a poor man's Burzynski head

They don't make this model anymore btw and to my knowledge the newer model only comes with Gitzo's useless proprietary clamp, mine is without one so I could install an Arca clamp.