"Soul Capturer" 100 Year Lens to 35mm,haunted Christmas Camera. Special Steampunk Film

there was no plan. so i made it up as i went along,decided to attach a lens and shutter from a box type camera (wollensak designed to fit on a camera 13 inches deep) onto a 35mm body fed5. i invite you to take this convoluted creative journey with me. all sourced components are from the broken spares or repairs department..
its 12.36 xmas morning so writing will be brief,
will amend l8r.
in the meantime any queries feel free to ask .
havent calibrated it yet
*the lens made by wollensak n y the camera was a fed5
utube link to shutter and iris demo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkcY6eB6a8I&feature=youtu.be
i found tha avi link below a bit clunky ,same vid as above :-)

took many attempts to rebuild iris, shutter quite fickle. originally this shutter would have had abour 4 speed , b and t setting,the speeds chosen by turning wheel and determined by friction of right hand cylinder on front,however i think there is a piece inside missing,after much cleaning i have one consistent speed about 1/100 guess and b setting

experimenting with alternative lenes. think i could make a diy fisheye, another project.

2 broken fins,leavs, blades, whatever.

small strong lens needed to make image smaller and closer. original lens focuses at 13 inches between lens and film got it domn to about 1cm. keeping extra glass as close to front glass keeps wide fiels of view. test with tracing paper. the way to work it out is to try and experiment ,often needing more hands that iv got stick tape comes in handy along with a distinct bright thing to focus on,i use a circular tube light

i took winder apart because i originally wanted to do a motor drive camera with this body, but so impressed with the lens i diverted . zenit parts made simpel ratchet system . fixed to original drive cog with bodyfiller.

used hot glue as much as possible on lens, because its really old and wated to show respect and cause minimal damage, hot glue relativly easy to remove.
my adapter lens came from a damaged fed lens (separate lot) theres something wrong with the adhesive holding the layers of glass together its no longer completly transparent and has a newton ring effect.

use magic tape ,scotch tape,write on tape ,to check focus,whilst positioning the lens,aimed for 2and a bit m focus at full open apature, when closed down should give a fair wide depth of focus. drilld holes and cutter then file to enlarge lens mount, because im running low on dremel fiber disks

the back relys on support from the top plate. wanted a compactness to body so cut a sliver of the top plate to hold back in place.
also used a more suitable piece from parts box to use as rewind.

hot glue lets light through, so a skim of bodyfiller applied, anyway its not so bad removing this filler from exterior radius's compared to interior.at this point its still setting so a sharp knife works for trimming to a happy shape.

sand bodyfiller with p80, p1500. p2000 and finally smoothest p2500 paper, tempary nuts and bolts in holes whilst checking for light leaks.

polished back to the brass on the camera, took black paint off, added varnish, finished with leather from millys cameras

firstly i found a lens on another camera that gave a similar size image on the magic tape. thats the focal length done.. then find at what position the iris lever gives a image the same brigtness as the stock lens,  set the stock lens at different settings and repeat. used perment pen to make note of these settings,than engraved a piece of aluminium to make a dial.
my guestimation of the shutter speed is 1/80 second!

made the speed dial more dial like. marked how far to wind for one frame, buff and sign and date. plan to do test run new years eve

400asa colour neg film, expiry date 2006. wasnt the brightest of locations but i expected brighter images, i guess my estimation of the shutter speed is a bit off. i used high and low apertures, it seems that the big aperture images are more visible although the focus at big apertures is a bit ropey  .guess i should have used the 1600film or done  a daytime roll .

seemed like a good idea last night but the results dont really tally with my hypothesis,oh well

the plan was to compare the amount of light passed through the rollensak shutter to the amount of light passed through a shutter with known speed settings, the light collector im using is a dslr.

equipment list
test subject shutter (W)
known good shutter (Z)
lens similar to w (T)
dslr  (C)(probably any digital camera with long exposure could be utilized)
dark foam (from toolkit..bathroom sponge and gaffa would have same effect)
scissors electrical tape
light source

method
cut foam to size of shutter curtain and affix over front of digital camera (C) ,this is a light seal.you could cut a body cap bla blah dust dlah. (its a recon unit sketchy video lots of hot pixles it their for abuse!)
select lens (T) with similar propeties to the lens being mesured (W) lens 28mm and set both to same apature. and fit to camera(Z) .
i did a quick test of the apertures by setting the (C)digital to 1 second whilst holding (Z) and (W)  open on b setting  the the images were similar enough to satisfy me that the fstops are accurate .
with (C) set to 5 seconds and holding (W) upto the foam firmly press the w shutter whilst c is doing its long exposure. then do the same with z at all z's speeds. it took a couple of attempts to get (C) iso setting to give a good range of tone.

result
the images seem to suggest its in the region of 1/15 second which contradicts the test roll taken recently, however there are 4 more thing that need to be considerd

1. the test film was very old and badly stored  
2. shutter W tends to be temperature sensitive faster when warm
3. the image circle from W does not fill the frame
4. the lens is so old its probably haunted