A friend of mine visited me some time ago and saw a wooden & brass dumpy level tripod I restored. My intention was to somehow fit a tripod head on this, but this project just did not materialise.

He had a vintage dumpy level and I gave him the tripod as a gift.

A couple of days later, he walked in with and old camera case and unpacked the contents on my desk. "This belonged to my father, who was an avid photographer and I want you to have this stuff" Pierre said. First an old Pentax Spotmatic and I knew what was to follow would be some M42 stuff. Then came what appeared to be a gunstock, but with a bellows mounted upside down at the back. This device also had a spring loaded trigger and the whole barrel moved when the trigger was depressed. "What the heck?" was my response.

Next came the "lens" which is attached to the front of the barrel. Thick glass element in front with aperture settings from F5.6-F32. Nice round aperture formation, but no glass element in the back! One can stick your finger in the back and touch the apertures. "What happened to the back glass element?" I wanted to know. "I don't think there is one" came the reply.

Next, an attachment which screws into the front of the former lens, and another long barrel which can also be attached to the former lens. I was totally baffled with this set-up - never seen anything like it. All the lenses and barrels were covered with some vinyl to protect it. The gunstock and bellows read Novoflex and that was the only thing which was familiar.

Curious as hell, I left the office early and tore off the tatty vinyl to reveal two lenses - the one a Novoflex Noflexar 400mm and the other a 640mm one. I got out the tripod, figured out the configuration and fitment, got out my SD10 and M42 adapter and mounted this monster. I played around with the bellows, but no focus. Then started using the spring loaded trigger, and voila! - perfect focus. I even got the focus indicator on the SD10 to work perfectly!

Now the 400mm gives me 680mm and the 640mm an equivallent of 1088mm. It was already getting a bit late but I was surpised that I could really get decent shutter speeds with all aperture settings, but what surpised me most was the image quality and sharpness of the lenses - they are really sharp @ F5.6. I could not believe my eyes, since most long M42's I have tested did not impress me at all. This is of course a universal set-up and different adapter rings were supplied for all mounts - mine is M42.

I later found out that for closer subjects the bellows is used for fine focussing.

Not much information is available on the internet regarding this item, but I gathered that is is called the Novoflex Follow Focus.

Needless to say I am over the moon with this free gift!

 

More Information:

 

Novoflex is best known for their follow-focus lenses. These tele-noflexar lenses came in focal

lengths from 200mm to 640mm. The most popular series were the 280mm f/4.5, 400mm f/5.6,

and 640mm f/9 follow-focus lenses.

The Novoflex follow-focus system was long regarded as the fastest available focusing system for

telephoto lenses prior to the advent of autofocus systems.

The Novoflex system mounts the lens on a special focusing mount, shaped somewhat like a gun-

stock. There is a squeeze control which is pressed to focus the lens. The camera is mounted to the

lens bellows using a special adapter for the desired camera mount. The lens fits into the front of a

flexible focusing mount (cf. bellows).

The noflexar lenses are sometimes called lens-heads. You can use the same follow-focusing setup

with any of the interchangeable lens heads. These lens heads just mount on the adjustable

focusing mount. You decide if you need the 240mm, 400mm, or 640mm from the typical trio of

lens heads you purchased.

Because of the range of the focusing mount, these noflexar lenses can be used from infinity down

to very close-focusing levels. This near-macro capability also adds greatly to their utility for the

wilderness or nature photographer too. Notice that these noflexar lenses are very long, so this

close-focusing capability can be achieved at some distance from a dangerous subject (e.g.,

rattlesnake) or skittish small critter.

Operating a Novoflex follow-focus lens setup takes some getting used too. You setup the general

focusing range by setting up the bellows (e.g., to 100 feet), then fine tune it with the squeeze

control. To me, operation is logically reversed. You squeeze the control towards yourself to focus

farther away. You release the control to focus on closer objects. But once you get the hang of it,

this is an incredibly fast focusing system.

Now for the bad news. No, I am not just referring to the price, which can be substantial.

The noflexar lenses are optimized for center sharpness. What does that mean? Usually lenses can be made very sharp at the center if you are willing to let the edges be much less sharp. In fact, the noflexar lenses put so much sharpness in the center that these older lenses still outperform many more modern telephoto lens models. But you usually have to crop the images in an enlarger or zoom slide duplictor to use them.

So why bother? Because most wildlife photographers and long telephoto users aren't trying to

compose a full frame sharp to the edges photograph. They are trying to get the sharpest possible

picture of a really remote beast or bird on film. Most likely, this image will have to be enlarged

further anyway. So cropping out the unsharp edges isn't that much extra effort.