Industar-37 on Speed Graphic
I have had a 300mm Industar-37 lens for some time now and have been wanting to use it with my Speed Graphic Pacemaker 4x5 large format camera. I finally purchased all of the pieces I needed and completed it recently. I am not sure if anybody else has an interest in using such a setup or knowing how I did it, but I thought I would try to do a post explaining the steps I took. I know I was searching the internet for somebody who had already done this and did not find anything. This is the first time I have done anything like a blogpost, so hopefully things will make sense :-)
I will just explain the steps I had taken with an occasional picture thrown in for good measure.
To set the scene, I already had a Speed Graphic and an Industar-51 lens, which is a 210mm f/4.5 lens that is nice for portraits. I also have Industar lenses on my 35mm Zorki cameras (Zorki 1 and Zorki 5), and then heard about the 300mm f/4.5 Industar-37. I did some research and thought this might make for a nice portrait lens, so I decided to see if I could use one with the Speed Graphic.
First, I had to acquire an Industar-37 lens. I got mine off of eBay. They are relatively inexpensive lenses. However, their end price is driven up a bit because almost all of them I have come across are located in Russia or one of the former Soviet states. If you do an eBay search for "Industar 37", you will find several of them. Most seem to be between about $30.00 and $100.00. However, you are probably going to spend anywhere from $20 to $40 for shipping. There are some with free shipping, but of course they are more expensive - maybe in the $100 range.
I checked the eBay listing photographs carefully when I purchased mine to make sure there were no scratches or fungus on the lens elements. I also made sure that the seller offered a return policy if I found it not to be "as advertised". I ended up paying $60.00 for mine, plus a $25.00 shipping fee, for a total of $85.00. It came with the lens and lens cap and bakelite case.
I then picked up a used Speed Graphic lens board for $12.00. It already had a hole in it for an Optar 135mm lens, but that was fine, since the hole for the Industar-37 lens was going to be much bigger than that.
So, I had the lens and the lens board. Now, how to put them together. I did some digging and found that the Industar-37 did come with a flange ring, however, the lens I purchased did not have that. The ring is an M80-0.75 (80mm diameter, thread pitch .75mm). I searched eBay and did not have much luck, so I contacted SK Grimes. They have lots of rings, but did not have this one. The said they could fabricate one, but the price was $160.00. I really did not want to spend that much for a ring that I was hoping to find for $5 or $10, especially considering that I only paid $85 for the lens, and $80 for the entire Speed Graphic camera outfit (yes, I got a great deal on the camera, but that is another story :)
I continued to search eBay, and did come across some rings, but they were always bundled with Industar-37 lenses. I waited, hoping to come across just a ring, but was not finding that. I finally decided that I was going to purchase an I-37 lens with case and lens cap and ring. The price, with shipping, was going to be about $120. But, I figured I would just keep the ring and re-sell the rest. The day before I was ready to purchase this, a couple of rings-only came up for sale on eBay. One of them was $15.00 with a $10.00 shipping fee (again, from a former Soviet state). It still seemed like quite a bit to pay for a ring, but compared to SK Grimes $160, or purchasing another entire lens kit for over $100, I decided to jump on it.
I now had all of the major pieces I needed, except for small screws, washers, nuts, etc, to mount the Industar-37 to a lens board and use with my Speed Graphic.
I will stop at this point and will post another entry on the actual assembly of my I-37 and Speed Graphic lens board.
Until next time, thank you for reading and have a great day!!