Ridgewood Cemetery, North Andover, Massachusetts... Kowa 2x Bell & Howell anamorphic
The title might seem a bit misleading but this really is in the cemetery, just hidden behind a building.
A local camera club recently had a facility clean-out and presented me with another lot of unwanted optics and photography related "bits and Pieces". While going through the lot I was separating the material into groups: "usable", "unusable...for parts only", and "trash". The trash category is almost always reserved for items that have been stored in a basement and have become moldy, to a degree that is beyond any hope of rehabbing. In the lot was an obviously moldy, tattered small leather bag (big as a Grapefruit), containing something heavy. The top was tied in a tight knot but I worked the contents out through a large hole in the bottom. What emerged was a "Kowa 2x Anamorphic lens for Bell & Howell"... a real gem, with good glass showing no hint of element separation. It was already fitted with an adapter allowing mounting on a lens having a 52mm filter ring. This was a totally unexpected and very welcome find. I use my Iscorama anamorphic lens on my Nikkor-H 85mm f/1.8 lens for macro / close-up shooting and had been looking for another that I could leave on a 50mm lens for wider shots. Iscoramas are almost prohibitively expensive in top condition and I had almost ruled out the possibility of finding one. This Kowa is a very highly rated anamorphic, generally considered to be ranked just below the Isco.
Before I could use it I had to remove its very obvious "moldy" scent. I lightly cleaned all exterior surfaces (lens too), with Ronsonol Lighter Fluid, allowed it to dry thoroughly in front of a dehumidifier, then left it and a clothes dryer sheet in a zip-lock bag overnight. In the morning the moldy odor was gone.
Fitting it to my 50 mm lens was easy, but when tightened securely the anamorphic compression element was skewed, not vertical. I rigged a rotating adapter from a junk polarizing filter, after removing the glass elements. Before framing a shot I simply rotate the Kowa's focusing reference mark in line with the center of the flash shoe on the camera, then compose and shoot. The picture above is one of several dozen test images taken at Ridgewood Cemetery. My intent was to check the lens for sharpness, and in particular... how the focusing worked. Using the Kowa, you have to synchronize its focus with that of the camera-mounted lens. I worked this by setting the estimated subject distance on the Kowa, then focusing the 50mm until the green "In focus" indicator in the viewfinder lit up. The process worked VERY well. Resizing in Photoshop was easy... decompressing the image by multiplying the height by 2.7 seeming to give the correct aspect ratio.
DSC-0583K-WS
Ridgewood Cemetery, North Andover, Massachusetts... Kowa 2x Bell & Howell anamorphic
The title might seem a bit misleading but this really is in the cemetery, just hidden behind a building.
A local camera club recently had a facility clean-out and presented me with another lot of unwanted optics and photography related "bits and Pieces". While going through the lot I was separating the material into groups: "usable", "unusable...for parts only", and "trash". The trash category is almost always reserved for items that have been stored in a basement and have become moldy, to a degree that is beyond any hope of rehabbing. In the lot was an obviously moldy, tattered small leather bag (big as a Grapefruit), containing something heavy. The top was tied in a tight knot but I worked the contents out through a large hole in the bottom. What emerged was a "Kowa 2x Anamorphic lens for Bell & Howell"... a real gem, with good glass showing no hint of element separation. It was already fitted with an adapter allowing mounting on a lens having a 52mm filter ring. This was a totally unexpected and very welcome find. I use my Iscorama anamorphic lens on my Nikkor-H 85mm f/1.8 lens for macro / close-up shooting and had been looking for another that I could leave on a 50mm lens for wider shots. Iscoramas are almost prohibitively expensive in top condition and I had almost ruled out the possibility of finding one. This Kowa is a very highly rated anamorphic, generally considered to be ranked just below the Isco.
Before I could use it I had to remove its very obvious "moldy" scent. I lightly cleaned all exterior surfaces (lens too), with Ronsonol Lighter Fluid, allowed it to dry thoroughly in front of a dehumidifier, then left it and a clothes dryer sheet in a zip-lock bag overnight. In the morning the moldy odor was gone.
Fitting it to my 50 mm lens was easy, but when tightened securely the anamorphic compression element was skewed, not vertical. I rigged a rotating adapter from a junk polarizing filter, after removing the glass elements. Before framing a shot I simply rotate the Kowa's focusing reference mark in line with the center of the flash shoe on the camera, then compose and shoot. The picture above is one of several dozen test images taken at Ridgewood Cemetery. My intent was to check the lens for sharpness, and in particular... how the focusing worked. Using the Kowa, you have to synchronize its focus with that of the camera-mounted lens. I worked this by setting the estimated subject distance on the Kowa, then focusing the 50mm until the green "In focus" indicator in the viewfinder lit up. The process worked VERY well. Resizing in Photoshop was easy... decompressing the image by multiplying the height by 2.7 seeming to give the correct aspect ratio.
DSC-0583K-WS