[LargeFormat] Re: Lensboards on the road, bellows in the bushes, tripod in the trees.

[Frantisek Vlcek]

r>     Let that be a lesson to you - do not set up your camera on the road just
r> over the brow of a hill.

Such an interesting story! What happened to you? And the car? I hope
you at least used some very heavy camera.

r>     But I digress - with consummate ease - what I really wanted to ask was
r> whether any manufacturer has ever made a zoom large format lens. I know
r> about the Schneiders for the MF and all of the SF stuff. I was also not
r> thinking of multi lenses or convertibles.

r>      No, has there ever been a dialable focal length-changing view camera
r> lens? It would save a lot of backpacking space and lensboard shuffling and
r> studio juggling....

In fact, not a zoom lens in its sense (zoom=keeping focus at all focal
lengths) but a transfocal lens was made for LF first! Yes, no cine,
small format, etc but LF! It was IIRC a dallmeyer telephoto, a
simple lens with couple of elements and a sliding element between them
providing the change of focal length. Of course, the apertures changed
too, so you had to compute them each time (or carry a table), and it
was nowhere too sharp... and never much popular.

Best regards,
   Frantisek Vlcek