A while ago I got a 25mm Zeiss Luminar lens which turned out to be a really useful lens for UV imaging (you can read about that here). As the 100mm is a triplet (even simpler than the 25mm), I had high hopes for its potential as a UV lens. Turns out that hope was misplaced, but the lens is still an interesting one….
I bought my copy as a microscope unit, consisting of the lens and a few other parts. This is what it looked like as the complete unit.
![](https://jmcscientificconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/20200430_112509-small.jpg)
The lens itself has a 35mm screw thread, and removing the extraneous parts of the setup above leaves this.
![](https://jmcscientificconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/20200430_112607-35mm-thread-small.jpg)
The lens elements protrude on this lens and mine had been put down on one of them, leaving a tiny mark (<0.5mm) in the middle of one of them. Even so I still wanted to give it a go for photography. The thread size is 35mm, so I bought a 35mm x 0.75 to M42 adapter from eBay. I then mounted this on a range of extension tubes (up to 11cm in total) and on to my Eos 5DSR. I use part of the original unit as a makeshift hood.
![](https://jmcscientificconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/20200519_124144-small.jpg)
Here’s some shots from the garden, all hand held. First with about 6cm extension, wide open, and full frame image (but reduced in resolution for sharing).
![](https://jmcscientificconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/578A8168-6cm-extension-small.jpg)
The short extension gave a focus distance of about 3m, and a really nice swirling bokeh in the background of the image. Then with 11cm extension, and slightly stopped down, again resized for sharing.
![](https://jmcscientificconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/578A8169-small.jpg)
![](https://jmcscientificconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/578A8172-cropped-small.jpg)
And finally, this was taken as a crop from the image above before resizing, and is shown as actual pixel resolution.
![](https://jmcscientificconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/578A8172-cropped-actual-pixels.jpg)
Even with a tiny mark on the lens there looks to be plenty of sharpness there. Could make for a really interesting portrait (with a short extension) or macro lens (with longer extension tubes).
Reusing older lenses can give your imaging a unique look, impossible to replicate digitally. If you want to know more about my work, you can reach me through my Contact page.