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SLR lenses on Eclair NPR


Aren Madsen

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Hi, 

Has anyone here had any experience using 35mm SLR lenses on an Eclair NPR? 

I'm planning on using some Minolta Rokkor lenses on mine using a C mount adaptor. 

If you've used SLR lenses on an NPR, how well did it work, was the coverage good, any tips or tricks? 

Thanks 

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This is no problem at all.  I used a c-mount to Contax adapter all the time when I had an Eclair.  

Coverage is not an issue, since the 135 stills format is much larger than 16mm.

The only minor caveat is that, because the diagonal measurement of 16mm is almost 3 times smaller than 135, the image from the lens is effectively magnified 3x.  So if the lens has some aberrations, they will be much more apparent than what you might be used to from stills or video from larger formats.

I'm sure you're aware that c-mount lenses can become unscrewed if the lens is torqued; this shouldn't be a problem if your lenses are properly lubricated and the focus turns smoothly.  On the other side of the adapter, the lens can shift in the mount of a stills bayonet mount since they are not positive locking.  If your adapter and lenses are in good shape, you shouldn't have to worry about this either.

Other than that, enjoy having lots of longer focal lengths to work with.

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58 minutes ago, Daniel Klockenkemper said:

This is no problem at all.  I used a c-mount to Contax adapter all the time when I had an Eclair.  

Coverage is not an issue, since the 135 stills format is much larger than 16mm.

The only minor caveat is that, because the diagonal measurement of 16mm is almost 3 times smaller than 135, the image from the lens is effectively magnified 3x.  So if the lens has some aberrations, they will be much more apparent than what you might be used to from stills or video from larger formats.

I'm sure you're aware that c-mount lenses can become unscrewed if the lens is torqued; this shouldn't be a problem if your lenses are properly lubricated and the focus turns smoothly.  On the other side of the adapter, the lens can shift in the mount of a stills bayonet mount since they are not positive locking.  If your adapter and lenses are in good shape, you shouldn't have to worry about this either.

Other than that, enjoy having lots of longer focal lengths to work with.

Does the aperture still do it's job the same way since as you say the lens is essentially being magnified 3x?

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The aperture works exactly the same; depth of field, exposure, etc. will behave as they normally would.

You can think of it as extracting the central 1/3 of a 135 stills frame.

To tell you how I learned the hard way:  I once borrowed a Nikkor 55mm f/1.2 for a shoot, hoping it'd be a bit more similar to the Kowa 16mm primes in terms of the coatings and the stop.  While passable wide open for full-frame stills, on 16mm the chromatic aberrations were proportionally larger since the area of the negative being used is smaller.  I went back to my Contax lenses after that - the Zeiss 50mm/1.7 was usable wide open, so it wasn't worth keeping the Nikkor if it'd need to be stopped down anyway.

It almost sounds like circular logic - the better your lenses are, the better they'll look on smaller film formats.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Hi! Totally fine to use 35mm stills lenses. I just shot a music video with an ACL using Samyang/Zeiss primes (24/35/50) look up Dropkick Murphys - 'Middle Finger' - its the narrative footage of the guy chasing the little boy. Looks great - better than my 12-120mm canon zoom or the c mounts.

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Is the c mount the second, top mount? My npr has a PL mount and a c mount on the revolving turret. The c mount is very close to the knob that turns the turret. It does not allow any adapters for slr lenses to fit. For instance, my Nikkor to c mount adapter could not fit. Beware of that. 

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  • 2 months later...

It's difficult to mount a short flange to focal plane lens like a Lecia M lens to a camera like the Cameflex. It might be possible if you replaced the turret entirely and had a mount machined up which allowed the M mount to fit inside where the Camé mount had been.

Heaps of people used Nikkor and Canon lenses on Cameflexes from Haskell Wexler to me. It's an easy conversion because, with the CM3 mount removed, only about 0.5mm of metal needs to be removed from the turret to fit a Nikon mount. 5 minute job as they say. To fit a really wide lens, you might have to machine off the turret pivot but it's no big loss. Probably the same applies to an NPR. You can still swing the turret but you need an Allen key first.

However, (forgive the name drop here) Beauviala from Aaton was a big fan of Leica lenses and thought that the R series lenses were just as good as the Ms but easier to fit since the flange to focal plane distance is almost exactly the same as the Camé turret with the CM3 mount removed.

Since the Leica R camera was a bit underwhelming, the R series lenses are a lot cheaper these days than M series. Without writing an essay on it, the R series lenses are full stop the best ciné lenses I have used. The only things which came close were Panavision lenses and certainly with an Aaton 35, the Leica/Aaton combination was noticeably better.

CM3-111.jpg

CM3-191.jpg

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