Added new images to the home page yesterday.

Two new photographs captured with a converted RB Graflex Series D 4x5 SLR camera seen in the above picture.

The reason I call it converted is that I’m not using the stock lens that came with the camera. With a custom lens mount, I attached a Kodak Aero-Ektar 7” f/2.5 lens. As mentioned in the previous “Cherry Blossoms” posting, the Aero-Ektar is a World War II era lens used for aerial assessment of bomb damage. The K-24 camera was mounted to various airframes, such as a B-17, B-24, or a P-38. I removed the lens from the K-24 camera I purchased on eBay.

The lens has a very shallow depth-of-field when used with a wide open   f/2.5 aperture. With 4x5 sheet film, the lens is just slightly longer than a normal 150mm focal length lens traditionally used on a 4x5 format camera. Being a lens engineered for clarity, what is in focus is very sharp, but used close to a subject, the out-of-focus areas of the image have a wonderful look that is hard to achieve on “modern” lenses.

If you are interested in more information about this lens, please check out the links on the “Cherry Blossom” posting in my ‘Muse.’

Thanks Sue Bloom for my portrait with the Graflex/Aero-Ektar camera.

• Washington Cherry Blossoms

• http://www.suebloom.com/portfolio.html