I recently purchased a 30mm enlarging lens for use on my Omrga 700 series enlarger. However, there dosen`t seem to be enough travel in the bellows to focus . Is this meant for other enlargers? It has standard thread and is made by Minolta.I also have a 40mm that works fine. Thanks Tom

-- Thomas Horan (Fishman57@aol.com), August 16, 1998

Answers

I'm not familiar with this enlarger, however, a 50mm lens is normally used for 35mm negatives.

-- Harold Todman (htodman@ggn.com), August 17, 1998.

Your problem may be more than just bellows draw (or compression, in ths case.) I have an old (circa 1970) 35mm Schneider Componon enlarging lens which I bought to print half-frame 35mm negatives (18x24mm). It does a fine job at that, but doesn't have much more covering power - certainly not enough to do a full frame 35mm negative. Traditionally, a 50mm enlarging lens was needed for full frame coverage, although I understand that there are 40mm lenses made today which will do the job. But I would be astonished if there were a 30mm lens which would cover 35mm full frame, and if it were an older formulation it might not even cover 35mm half-frame. I'm not sure what format a 30mm lens might be made to cover - it sounds a bit long for Minox negatives, and I don't know what there is between that and half-frame 35mm unless it is something like 16mm movie film.

So, even if you could get your 30mm lens close enough to the negative to focus, I'd be surprised if it could enlarge any but the center of the negative. You might be able to confirm this by mounting the lens upside down on the lensboard, if you can mount the lens this way (I have a Beseler enlarger, so don't know details of an Omega lens mounting system). This will put the lens closer to the negative, and might let you focus enough to see what kind of coverage the lens has. Of course you can't use the lens this way very conveniently, but if there is enough coverage for some purpose you might be able to find a recessed lens board for the Omega that will move the lens closer to the negative. I have to use one of these on my Beseler for both 35mm and 50mm lenses. But, at least for Beseler, these are not cheap items, so if I were you I'd try to check the lens coverage first before buying a recessed board.

Hope this helps.

Cheers, Kip Babington

-- Kip Babington (cbabing3@swbell.net), August 18, 1998.

Didn't Minolta make a 110-format SLR, about 20 years ago? Quite a popular executive-style toy, as far as I recall. Possibly this 30mm enlarging lens was made for that. I don't know the size of 110 negatives.

You can get a first approximation of the coverage of a lens by holding it close to a window, with a sheet of white paper in the position of the film. You'll get a circular image, and the diameter will be a little larger than the film format diagonal. It's larger, because the edge of the circle will have too much fall-off to be usable.

-- Alan Gibson (gibson.al@mail.dec.com), August 18, 1998.