Postby Mick Fagan » 09 Oct 2015, 20:17
Macro work on a 4x5” camera depends a bit on the bellows extension you have available. For this reason many monorail 4x5 cameras have the capacity to add an extension set of bellows, usually just another set of standard bellows. You will probably have around 600mm to 700mm of reliable extension possible.
If you are using a folding field camera, then my guess is that you will be restricted to around 300mm of reliable and easy extension. You can use a top hat, which is a solid extension that moves your lens away from the lens board, anything much more than 100mm could start to test the rigidity of your front end.
There are special macro lenses for 4x5 cameras, I have used two of them, both 120mm. One was a Nikkor, the other was a Rodenstock. From memory both were apochromatically corrected, accordingly, both were in the stratosphere price wise. I doubt there were ever more than a couple of dozen in total in Australia, but there were at least two. They were used in product photography, specialising in small items; think jewellery and like product.
When I emulated these lenses at home, I used old process lenses from (obviously) process cameras. Process cameras usually came with at least 3 lenses, a wide, normal and long. The smaller print shops around the country had, may still have out the back, a myriad of differing small process cameras. I picked up a 120 Schneider f9 process lens for $5.00 in Ballarat, on another purchase I picked up a Schneider 240 f9 in Horsham along with some other stuff for around $20.00.
Most of these smaller process lenses are on cameras that only handle film up to about A3 size. There were shed loads of Agfa process cameras in Australia, most were equipped with Agfa branded lenses. To the best of my knowledge, virtually all Agfa branded process camera lenses, were either Rodenstock, or Schneider sourced; all were more than adequate for flat reproduction work at close distances. They are reasonable at long distances and also to infinity, but they were not designed for that kind of work
The smaller process camera lenses should be, and are suitable for close work as they are optimised for working at close distances. Process lenses usually have very even light gathering across their entire circle, both of mine do. With something around 120mm/135mm bellows extension usually isn’t that great to get a 1:1 image. The downside of a process lens, is that they usually don’t come with a shutter. I myself took many pictures with the 120 Schneider using a folded dark cloth and low lights. As metered exposure was almost always in seconds, plus the addition of more time for reciprocity, this isn’t much of an issue and a fudge factor doesn’t seem to matter too much in B&W or colour negative.
Your 135mm lens would be the first one I would have a crack at using to get a taste of what is possible. I would suggest you try as much as possible to shade the front of the lens from any direct light, other than from the subject. As you will invariably have your bellows drawn pretty much right out, this could mean internal light bouncing on the inner folds of your bellows, something that usually degrades either the whole by reducing contrast, or giving you some bright spots here and there, usually more here and more there.
However, as Lachlan says, what exactly are your lenses?
Mick.