Reasonable lens for 6x6 coverage, Ilex #3 shutter

[benjamin_wooten]

Hi everybody! I'm building up a frankencamera from a discarded Omega enlarger. What it comes down to is an Ilex #3 shutter (big lovely thing) in need of a lens that will offer at least 6x6cm coverage for medium format shooting.

I'm mostly a pinhole/plastic lens kind of guy, and am a little clueless where to start. This definitely does not need to be an optical showstopper of a lens. Any practical experience with decent, affordable MF lenses would be great. A side note, the bellows travels from between 1" to 6" at full extension.

Thanks for any/all advice or thoughts!

Very best,

BEN

[keithwms]

Why not put a mamiya rz 110/2.8 on there.

[Hikari]

Why not a nice 80mm enlarging lens. It should be easy to mount in a shutter. I would look for a 6-element design by Schneider, Rodenstock, or Nikon. The Rodenstock APO 80mm is really nice. Enlarger lens of longer focal length will also be nice.

[John Austin]

A possibility is to see how much the Ilex shutter is really worth to a LF user and if you sell it use the money to get something like a 105mm Xenar-Tessar thing in a smaller shutter

Warning, don't go to the Xenar vs Tessar thread, you will be lost in a circle of confusion for ever and a day

[rthomas]

Old folding cameras with trashed bellows have proven to be an interesting source of lenses for me. I've gotten several at antique shops for $5.00 or so. One lens from a Kodak Premoette Jr, with a focal length somewhere around 100mm, ended up on my RB67 (I used a body cap as a lens board); it's almost as good as my 127mm f/3.8 (non-C) Mamiya-Sekor. Another is a Bausch & Lomb Rapid Rectilinear, about 180mm (?) that came off a Kodak Autographic and covers 4x5" film, or even 8x10" (@300mm?) with the front cell removed. Admittedly these lenses have pretty simple shutters, the ones I've seen have Kodak Dakon or Kodak Ball-bearing shutters and the speed ranges are basically 1/25th, 1/50th, sometimes 1/100th, and T or B. Anyway these lenses all cover 6x9 or larger depending on the camera.