Obscure, fast, modified optics

An article on Bjørn Rørslett's website entitled Need for Speed: Shooting with Very Large-Aperture Lenses inspired me to find some of these "mystical" optics to use with my own F-mount camera. One of the lenses noted on Mr. Rørslett's site regarding these very wide aperture lenses was a 50mm F/0.75 Rodenstock TV-Heligon. The term "Heligon" seemed relatively easy to search so I starting looking for Heligons around the internet. My search wound its way to eBay where there were a number of these "Heligons" for auction including one of these F/0.75 TV-Heligons. All of these lenses need to be adapted and I had no resources to adapt these lenses.

My curiousity surrounding these lenses continued, however. After months of searching I actually came across one auction where a Canadian seller had actually modified (or ordered the modification) of the lens mount of a 75mm F/1.1 Rodenstock XR-Heligon (out of an X-ray machine most likely) to be used with Nikon F-mount cameras. I quickly purchased this lens for the buy it now price and the seller, William Gower, very promptly shipped the product to me. Prior to the lens' arrival I inquired into the prospect of getting other lenses modified. It appeared that selecting and modifying these lenses was a hobby of his and he demonstrated experience in the areas of choosing and modifying these Heligons. I shall likely pick up another lens from him in the future.

The lens proved to be a remarkable piece of optical engineering not only in specification but also in physical dimensions. The lens weighs about 1.5kg's (about 3.5lbs), has a 77mm front element, has a press-fitted lens mount adapter which maximizes the focal distance of the lens, and at F/1.1 it's about 8x as bright as my fastest zoom lenses. The lens has no focusing mechanism or any way to stop down the lens. As it has been modified, the lens can project a focused image when its front element is about nine inches away from the subject. All of the images rendered have extremely shallow depth of field and though the viewfinder doesn't always show it, stray light seems to fog the images and add to the soft, "dreamy" appearance of the output. Shown at the top of this entry is a photograph of some motherboard components off an ECS motherboard which happens to have a purple PCB. The second image is of some strange plant which I found in the Visual Communications Design studio at the University of Albert. Neither image was edited beyond scale down and export for web. It is also important to note that the images are not completely out of focus and that I did make an effort to focus on "something" when composing and setting up each photo. Images were manually exposed as the Fuji S2 Pro refuses to meter through non-CPU-equipped lenses. These were among the first images I took with the lens. I expect to explore the capabilities of this lens more and I am looking to expand the collection of high speed, F-mounted lenses. This entry is dedicated to Steve in Belgium who contacted me regarding the possible purchase of an Epson Stylus Pro 9600 UltraChrome.