Just picked up a tachihara and was wondering whether i can focus to infinity with a 235mm lens, without using the bellows extension. What would be the lens size limit, without bellows, for this camera? I'm sure there is a formula for this but seeing as i'm not very adroit at calculations...

-- greg bergman (gbergma1@maine.rr.com), February 13, 2000

Answers

I think the bellows on a Tachihara is a bit over 12 inches. This means that you can focus a 300mm (a 12-inch lens) to infinity.

-- William Marderness (wmarderness@hotmail.com), February 13, 2000.

12" of bellows for a 300mm lens is not practical for 2 reasons: 1. You can't focus any closer than infinity. 2. If you need movement to change plane of focus, there will be no

extra bellows with which to do it. You might consider a telephoto 300mm. These typically only require around 200mm of bellows. There are a couple of other considerations, one being coverage, the other being exit pupil factor. Niether should be a big problem for general landscape work.

-- Robert A. Zeichner (razeichner@ameritech.net), February 14, 2000.

The longest lens you can use is probably the Fuji 400T. Recent pricing on this lens is to your advantage.

-- Pat Raymore (patrick.f.raymore@kp.org), February 15, 2000.

Yes a 300mm is impractical. Anything longer than 210mm will have movement and close focusing limitations.

-- William Marderness (wmarderness@hotmail.com), February 15, 2000.

The Tachihara has a 13" bellows so a 235 mm lens will work fine. I was told by someone who used a 300 mm lens on his that he could focus from infinity to about 9 feet, which if correct would make the 300 mm lens very feasible. I used the Fuji 400T on my Tachihara and it worked just fine.

-- Brian Ellis (bellis@tampabay.rr.com), February 15, 2000.

I use a Fuji A 240mm f/9 as my longest lens on the Tachihara. It will focus down to 4'4" (measured from the film plane.) This is an image scale of almost 1/3 life size on the film.

-- Gary Frost (gfrost@home.com), February 18, 2000.