First off a bit of info concerning my background in photography:
My family did not have a digital camera for quite a long time and in late 2013(!) finally got a Pentax K-50. The K-50 got company a year ago in the shape of a K-1.Back to 2014.
In February a friend of mine suggested that I should get myself a version of the well known Helios 44.
The swirly bokeh intrigued me, and thoroughly bored with the 18-55mm kit-lens I ended up with a KMZ Helios 44k-4.
Shortly after that I visited my local photo store, where upon asking if they had any M42 lenses the owner disappeared in the cellar and came back with a box containing a Pentax SMC Takumar 28/3.5 and 150/4, both including their hoods and cases, and 5cm of extension tubes.
He offered to sell me the lenses for 20$ each and gave me the tubes for free. Brilliant value if you ask me!
From there on there wasn’t much stopping me really, I quickly had a list of lenses I’d like to acquire and also bought a few more that year, but I really can’t remember which one was the next one!!
After racking up over 20 lenses and working myself through (nearly) my whole wishlist I started thinking what I could do next.
I kinda fancied doing something different, more unique.
When I saw that Lomography started a kickstarter for their Daguerreotype Achromat in Pentax K mount I became interested in the design, but did not want to shell out the cash for such a simple design (sorry Lomography!), besides, I was far more interested in their Petzval model than the Daguerreotype, but the Petzval wasn’t available for Pentax.
So, the logical conclusion, to me, was that It’d be way cooler to adapt a proper old lens to work on my K-1.
So the past year I started researching old lens designs and photography methods and became fascinated by the simpleness of many lenses and their unique rendering, especially compared to today’s contemporary lenses which are, usually, fairly ‘sterile’.
By chance I started looking for Petzval design lenses on Ebay this April (everyone trawls Ebay late at night from time time, right?) and found one of relatively short focal length including it’s lens board.
Now, I knew it had no aperture but who stops down a Petzval anyways (I thought) ? The rack & pinion gear looked complete, the glass pretty scratch less, though it does have some marks which might be slight element separation or the remains of a removed fungus on the front element(s).
But the most important thing to me was that it’s focal length wasn’t larger than 150mm and that it had a Flange Focal Distance large enough to work with.
The lens board however was what really made be buy it.
So here I was, looking at this lens older than anything else I own, (bar a wardrobe, but I can hardly hold that in my hands and thoughtfully muse about it) absolutely fascinated by the simplicity of it.
I disassembled it the same day and started on the adapter the next day, but that will have to wait for part 2, which should be posted in a few days time!
Thanks for reading & stay tuned!
Geoffrey
