Minox 8x11 with Wide Angle

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Minox 8x11 with Wide Angle /Telephoto Afocal Attachment Lens

In the 50s of last century, wide angle and telephoto attacment lenses were quite common for 8mm movie cameras. A 3 position turret with blank hole, a 06.x wide angle and 1.7 x tele was mounted in front of the lens. By turning the turret, one could choose normal, wide angle or telephoto. The tele photo attacment was a Galilean telescope with small magnification factor, and the wide angle lens was a inverse Galilean.

Rolleiflex made wide angle and tele mutars for its TLR cameras.

Zeiss Ikon also made an afocal attachment for its Contaflex I and II SLR, used with aperture stop down. The Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Teleskop was big and clumsy. Later Zeiss Ikon abandoned the Teleskop attachment idea for later Contaflex models B/BC/SUPER B, and replaced it with Zeiss Pro-Tessar convertible lens: the front element must be removed, then attach the wide angle or telephot Pro-Tessar. Kodak Retina had similar convertible lenses.

This afocal attachment technique migrated to subminiature cameras in the 60s to 70s. For example Gami camera had 4x and 8x tele, and Rollei 16/16S had 0.6x mutar (wide angle ) and 1.7x mutar (tele)

In the early 80s, when P&S camera first came out, there were third party wide angle and telephoto attacment lenses made for Canon and Nikon fix focus P&S cameras.

Kodak also made a tele attachment lens for its disc camera.

Later due to the advance in zoom lens technique, these attacmenet lenses disappeared.

There was no such wide angle /tele attacment made for Minox.

However, with a binocular attachment, one can attach one of these wide/tele attachment len to Minox 8x11 cameras and take wide angle photo or telephoto. With a 0.6x attachment, the focal length of Minox becomes 9mm, with a 1.7x attachment Minox lens becomes 25mm lens. Gami tele lenses and Rollei mutars are high quality attachment lenses.

When use, set Minox lens at infinity for distant object. It is possible to take picture with object other than at infinity, but then focusing becomes more complex, and it depends not only on the magnification of afocal lens, but also on the separation between afocal lens with camera lens.

-- Anonymous, February 13, 2000


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