Wild 1x and 0.8x photo relay lenses--tube lens potential?

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Scarodactyl
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Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:26 am

Wild 1x and 0.8x photo relay lenses--tube lens potential?

Post by Scarodactyl »

Just a quick thought that has been in the back of my head for a while. Back in the day afocal imaging was the standard camera hookup method for a few brands, including Zeiss, Leitz and some Wilds. This would use either a normal viewing eyepiece or an extra well corrected photo eyepiece to project the image to infinity with a relay lens (or whatever you call it) above it of appropriate focal length to focus a well sized image onto your film.
Usually the only one we'd care about is the standard '0.32x' lens for 35mm film, and anyway today they are largely obsolete, replaced with modern 40mm or 50mm pancake lenses which give wider fields of view and are much easier to set up. Even more obsolete though are 0.8x and 1x lenses, which would project a huge image onto huge film.
I bring this up because someone is selling 0.8x and 1x Wild lenses cheap https://www.ebay.com/itm/293671410397
These were made for the Wild M400, which is a very nicely-specced system designed specifically for photography which holda up to this day--they are probably pretty good lenses. I will admit I have never gotten an M400 that had this system intact and I alwzys set them up for direct projection o to aps-c anyway, but my understanding is it's the same as any other afocal setup with an eyepiece and relay lens. Doing some math, the 0.32x lenses are known to be about 60mm in focal length, which puts the 0.8x around 150mm and the 1x around 180mm, putting them into the 'tube lens potential' zone.
I ordered one of each but doubt my ability to do a meaningful test (unless they are total garbage a d don't need fine testing), but I wonder if these or others (similar Leitz 1x or 0.8x lenses are often cheap too) have been tried for this and if the results are any good.


Edit: nope. These must have been standalones with no photo eyepiece or other lens involved, as they just seem to be diverging lenses which must have resized the image straight off the tube lens.
I do have a Leitz afocal 1x which may prove more promising.

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