So we had this old 65mm Mamiya C330 twin lens just lying around and I had this idea to find a vintage camera lens to replace the bottom lens with and see what we could come up with. The trouble was finding a 65mm lens on an old vintage camera that would project 6x6. As it turns out, the only lens I could find was from an old Brownie 127 camera. These cute old cameras came with a 65mm f/14 single element lens with fixed focus. I found one on eBay, hacked off the lens, removed the elements from our Mamiya lens and replaced them with the brownie. The lens actually had to be fitted well behind the shutter and aperture blades so the Mamiya aperture serves as a cool vignetting tool. I ground out the aperture of the Brownie to f/5.6, calibrated the focus and ran a roll through it. The result... Interchangeable toy camera lens with leaf shutter and bellows focussing! Check it!
These were all shot on Frankie, our hand held 4x5 monster! Walking around doing large format tilt/shift street photography in San Francisco is amazing! People just loved seeing that old beast hanging from my shoulder. The film is Fuji FP-3000B45 and it is expired 3 years so we rate it at ISO 12000! The negs are gritty for 4x5 but I like it! The grain is really beautiful on this film. I really can't wait to print these 20x24.