Has anyone had success putting a teleconverter for professional video in front of a long lens to make it even longer? I remember a year ago, someone advertised one of these on Ebay saying it could be used on LF lenses. If it works, a X 1.6 could turn a 600 into a 960mm. To be honest, I have tried that with a small video converter and although the 4x5 format was well covered, the results were unacceptably soft. The pro converters are big pieces of glass, made for zooms with focal lengths ranging from 10 to 180 mm, but using a longer prime lens probably induces some additional aberration. In reality the Fujinon C 600 is sharp enough to produce images that can be cropped, still, my curiosity calls for feedback if there is any!

-- Paul Schilliger (pschilliger@smile.ch), May 22, 2002

Answers

Don't know about video converters, but Horseman used to make a teleconverter for LF lenses (for 150mm I seem to recall). I also recall that these were not that good in terms of quality.

-- paul owen (paulowen_2000@yahoo.com), May 22, 2002.

No, but I tried it the other way, (A wide-angle converter taped on the front of a 190mm Ektar on my 4x5 Super D Graflex). It didn't work. I don't understand why not.

-- Willhelmn (wmitch3400@hotmail.com), May 22, 2002.

I tried putting a good Sony 1.5 (VCL 1558) converter on the front of my 270mm Schneider Tele Xenar. I had high hopes when it screwed right on. I made two identical photographs one with and w/o on 100 asa Ilford B&W.

If I croped the 270 mm negative to the same image as the 400, I had more detail in the stright 270 negative.

I had more success with a single front element and a yellow filter, off of a 10" Protar that is about 100 years old.

Neal

-- Neal Shields (shields@ftw.com), May 24, 2002.