EL-Nikkor 180mm f/5.6 Nikon Enlarger Lens Bokeh Test and Review
- Mohsen Jalali
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
As I was looking for something in our vault of rare, vintage lenses, this EL-Nikkor 180mm f/5.6 Nikon Enlarger Lens caught my eye, and I thought, why not mount this one on a mirrorless camera to see if it gives any peculiar bokeh? After all, there is not much difference in how irregular it is to mount a projection lens on a Nikon Z7 and do the same to a darkroom enlarger lens. The best way I found was to put it on a Nikon mount bellows. Look how much more interesting the lens looks now.
Nikon started manufacturing enlarger lenses in the early 1970s, and few of them were still in production in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The EL-Nikkor series was one of the last lines to discontinue. This makes this one the newest lens in every respect that we have tested so far, and actually, it may remain the newest forever, because we originally intended to test early- to mid-20th century lenses of any kind. Anyway, while keeping their designs the same through the years, Nikon improved the coatings and body materials of the darkroom enlarger lenses it produced.
Color Shots
As you can see below, the color shots show a high level of sharpness, especially when the focus is right (which, of course, was relatively difficult with this oddity extending between the lens and camera). The bokeh has bubbles that preserve their form almost all around the frame, but the bokeh is not swirly.
Black-and-White Photography
All of the photos and videos we shared from this lens were taken on a cloudy day when the light was soft, and that can be a reason why the following shots lack much contrast. But as you can see, just like the color shots, the bokeh is soft and mostly uniform all across the sensor area.
Videos
Here are the shortened videos we took with this lens on our Nikon Z7, and this brings us to the end of this post relatively fast. You know you can communicate with us to get further info and materials, don't you? Thanks for your attention!
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