Pentax Bellows K

I just recently purchased this bellows kit and decided to give it a try.
Its a beautifully engineered piece of kit.
Its designed to allow lenses to be mounted in reverse as well as normal mounting and comes with a dual cable release. Not ideal on a DSLR, but still handy for stopping down the lens after composing your shot. (no more dark viewfinder)It works with the lens mounted in reverse or forward facing.

50mm M f4 macro lens mounted in reverse
[IMG]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x261/ClarkyinAus/58992fa3.jpg[/IMG]

Normal mounting
[IMG]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x261/ClarkyinAus/f94e4d11.jpg[/IMG]

My first shot uncropped straight out of the camera, Lens mounted in the normal forward position, mounted on a tripod.
[IMG]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x261/ClarkyinAus/ad6e1be9.jpg[/IMG]

That's a lovely photo Clarky - looks like the 50mm macro is a winner!

I'm tempted to get a set of bellows - what's the maximum extension on these?

Thanks Hefty, It extends to 180mm without the lens and 230mm with the 50mm macro attached.

It sure would be handy if someone could come up with a dual electronic shutter release for the DSLR and mechanical aperture release for the lens. I'm not asking too much am I.

Sounds like a good idea to me - where's Don when we need him..?

I have the Auto Bellows A set and I don't think there is any difference between the K and A versions. Mine certainly doesn't have any electrical umbilical flailing around inside the bellows .

Clarky,

Certainly looks to be a well-built bit of gear! My old screw-mount monorail seems positively flimsy in comparison.

Bellows are great, with almost infinite combinations to play with. I've never had the best of results with my 50mm Macro on tubes or bellows (never tried it in reverse, though). My best so far has been with a 135mm mounted forward or backward. Of course this has all been on film. I haven't had much experience with the 1.5 factor on digital.

Good work with the spider! It takes me forever to set up a shot with bellows, and the critter would have left me long ago out of sheer boredom.

Cheers!

About 5 years ago, at this time of year, I came across the M bellows complete with the Slide Copier M which has another 2 bellows on it in Cash Converters, Wigan all mint for 50 quid. It included the double release and the 2 stainless steel magnification rulers. Beautiful piece of kit.

It shouldn't be too hard to adapt the cable release to close a circuit at the camera end, because it stops the lens down well before the shutter fires, not really needed if you can fire two releases at about the same time possibly using both hands.

In the same shop they also had a mint AF080C Ringflash for another 50 quid so I had to snatch that as well.

shim

Thanks guys
Shim, I currently use the 2 handed technique, and will look at making something to activate it with one action. cheers

The quickest way to cobble something up is probably an old lens with a built in shutter and coaxial flash connection. I've just looked at an old Polaroid type 47 film camera I have (410b) it's one of those fold out bellows type and has a 127mm Rodenstock lens in a Prontor shutter with all the flash contacts X, M etc. there's even a lead that plugs into the coaxial connection to take the feed to a flash hotshoe on the camera. All I would need to do would be remove the shutter and lens, connect a small jack plug (for the Camera remote release) to a lead and connect the other end to the wires that went to the hotshoe. This could be mounted on the bellows or tripod. I would have to cock the shutter every time.... not really a problem. I've tried the bellows cable release and it screws in and fires the Prontor shutter OK after it's stopped the Bellows lens down. Some adjustment of the firing time is possible with the X - M setting. The whole thing wouldn't be very big and these shutters can be mounted on a plate the same way they are on view cameras.

shim

I have Pentax bellows mint condition, used it with the S1a screw thread and often wondered if you could change the screw mount for the K bayonet type?

I did it with this Novaflex bellows and it worked fine and wasn't too difficult to do. I only converted the camera end though not the lens end.

[IMG]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x261/ClarkyinAus/IMGP7220.jpg[/IMG]

I ended up selling this and got 40quid for it, without the lens

Hi Clarky, do you mean something like this link

I'm in the process of making the modifications to my K Bellows so that I can copy slides. Scanning on a flatbed scanner simply takes too long, so it's either this or they never get digitised :

This seems pretty interesting. Where can I get my hands on a set of this? Clarky do you still use yours? Where did you get them from? Ebay I suppose was it? How much do they usually go for?

I certainly would love to get my hands on one if its not very expensive and give it a try.

Thanks

Amin

Amin,

You might have missed this in the classifieds link It might be worth emailing him to see if he still has it.

Ken

Greg, that looks exactly what I am after. Let me know how you go with it, I would be very interested.
I can't make out the camera end of that blue cable to well in the photo. but I assume it plugs directly into the shutter release socket on the camera??

Sorry Amin but I couldn't part with my bellows K, They don't come up too often, but the 2 I did see sell on Ebay fetched 180quid and 125quid, so not cheap. Or you could get lucky like me and pick one up as part of a job lot for next to nothing,