Wollensak 90 or 120mm Oscilloscope lens

[naren]

A friend has a lens he's selling and I might want to pick it up if it could work on my view camera and 6x7 back for portraiture. I've heard of people using various oscilloscope lenses for macro work on 4x5 cameras (Nikon lenses in particularly). I showed this lens to a dealer and he was surprised that it had a shutter and diaphragm (at least the diaphragm). I posed this question to him and he said, well with something as subjective as portaiture who knows... give it a shot. Except I haven't had a chance to borrow it and test it and my buddy might want to sell the lens tomorrow. Any advice? Thanks.

[Ronald M]

Some of these will not focus at distances greater than a few feet. The image goes to mush. This is in the lens design, not a focus mount problem. Try first.

[Brian Sweeney]

The older O-scopes had shutters and diaphragms. They wre manually set, some were electronic. Some were built into Polaroids. They were optimized for close-up work. They should go for low-prices, few people use O-Scope cameras anymore. They were useful for Analog O-Scopes, and the test world has gone to Digital Scopes. I converted a CRT lens to a Nikon S-Mount, and agree that focus beyond 6 feet was mushy. I re-arranged the spacing between the front and rear cell and am re-trying. It look better through the viewer.