Strange rings

[Patrick Blancheton]

Hi All,

I bought on eBay this set of two rings for peanuts ;-)
Does anyone know what they are for ?

Patrick

[F2F3F6]

Salut Patrick,

These rings seem to be interchangeable rings like on the Soligor-Vivitar bellows of the 70's...I once had a Soligor bellows (shaped like a Nikon PB5 or PB 4 but without tilt possibility) and it had such kind of rings...

Hope it helps !

Didier (Another Frenchie !)

[dickb]

Didier is right. I have a few sets of those rings, for Minolta MD and Pentax K. They are rather complex  as they are designed to maintain the automatic aperture linkage, so they have may tiny bearings in them. The internal diameter is rather limited, so they introduce vignetting when combined with some lenses.

[Patrick Blancheton]

Thanks to both of you.

I thought it was part of a macro system, and I see that I was right 

Now I have to find what can I put between these two rings!

[F2F3F6]

And the body mount is the old F mount, not Ai, nor Ais !

[Birna Rørslett]

And the body mount is the old F mount, not Ai, nor Ais !

The mount appears to have the required cut-out for AI??

[Patrick Blancheton]

The mount appears to have the required cut-out for AI??

Yes, that's a plain AI mount even with the little tab to use it with a DS-12 for example.

[F2F3F6]

Sorry, you're right Birna and Patrick, I had an older kit, in F mount, so I thought it was the same...and didn't look carefully on your images !

[Hugh_3170]

Ah ha!  I think I have the bellows for these.  Must go looking for the Nikon mount attachment.

[Patrick Blancheton]

Hi all!

Thanks to an eBay ad, we have a precise answer to the mystery.

https://www.ebay.fr/itm/164883212766?hash=item2663ce29de:g:uA8AAOSwPBRgrPzW

Patrick

[dickb]

I just came across my bellows that use these rings. It is branded Asanuma, there may well be several other brand names used, like Aico in the ebay auction. It is a very sturdy and heavy item, double rail for the bellows, single rack-and-pinion for the focus rail. A quick phone photo:

[Hugh_3170]

Yes, Dick, your Asunama bellows appears to be identical to my ellows which is branded as "Elicar".

I have the F-Mount attachment for the Nikon Lens, which appears identical to the one in Patrick's image, but as of yet do do not have the F-Mount attachment for attaching a Nikon body to my bellows.  You also have the attachment that runs in the two hollow tubes at the front of the bellows;  my bellows lacks this attachement.

On my bellows, on the left side when looking from the lens adapter end, there is a graduated scale running from 50 to 160 in steps of 10mm, with a dot at the intermediate 5mm points.

Thanks for clearing up my mystery as well. 

[dickb]

Hugh, yours may differ in some minor ways from mine. Mine has a graduated scale from 40mm (minimum extension) to 150mm (maximum extension).

The attachment on mine is for attaching it to a base plate for vertical use, I presume. There may well be  a slide copying attachment as well to fit in the same place.

[dickb]

I just found another version of this bellows in my collection, it's a fixed mount variant in Pentax-K. It still retains the cutout for the mount release tab. This one has the graduated scale from 50 to 160mm. Unfortunately the sticker with the brand name is missing, so I don't know what it was branded as.

[Hugh_3170]

Definitely a very similar beast to mine. I will organise an image for you of my one.  Bear with with me.