Show us your lens or lenses

Ian Grant

Ian Grant

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We need a "Show us your lens (or lenses)" sticky, but they must be atypical, i.e., not the regular standards, WA's Telephoto's etc. This comes after a day's spree buying lenses last weekend, and those I've bought in the last year or so.

Ian
 
I'll start with this rare 184mm f4.5 Wray Lustrar, mostly supplied to the MOD with the MPP S92 military Micro Technical cameras, and highly acclaimed for its high resolution.

Lustrar03sm.jpg

A 1953 lens, oddly it's in a pre-WWII Dial-Set Compur, but so were 180mm Heliars, and 180mm Xenars and 165mm Angulons, until the release of the Rim-Set Compurs later in the year.

lustrar02sm.jpg

lustrar01sm.jpg

Ian
 
Well, @Ian Grant I don't have it yet, but thanks to you lot, I went and bought a 203mm f/7.7 Ektar I didn't need ... I mean, I had to get it you understand, but I didn't actually need it.

I have got to stop reading these threads...
 
I've had a few 203mm Ektars, I still have 4. They are as good as their shutter, but there's also the US version usually in a Supermatic, and the UK made version in originally an Epsilon, then Prontor SVS, and a few in a Compur.

My best and the one I use now is late US version sleeved to fit a Graphex Compur #1 shutter. a great lens.

Ian
 
Ian Grant said:
I've had a few 203mm Ektars, I still have 4. They are as good as their shutter, but there's also the US version usually in a Supermatic, and the UK made version in originally an Epsilon, then Prontor SVS, and a few in a Compur.

My best and the one I use now is late US version sleeved to fit a Graphex Compur #1 shutter. a great lens.

Ian
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Yes, I've had them before and have found them to be excellent performers
 
Shooting flash with a lens from 1863.

dallmey-portrait-petzval-01sm.jpg

dallmey-portrait-petzval-02sm.jpg

Just add a Gitzo shutter with flash sync, this is a large lens.

nicbw02sm.jpgnicbw01sm2.jpg

Ian
 
Helvetia Extra Rapid Rectilinear, focal lentgh may have 450mm, I have to measure again and with more precision.

Extra Rapid.JPG


A common lens, yes - but with some fine tuning ( i found turning the front lens 180degrees very helpful) it gives me
the wanted charactere:

Helvetia an 30x40.jpg
 
I was greatly impressed by “Wray Design Advances British Photographic Supremacy.” Things have changed since 1953.
 
Heliar f4,5/360mm:

DSC00912.JPG


A mild lens wide open, with fantastic rendering.
Scenes in front of / beyond the focus point slide very friendly into velvetlike unsharpness, no hard transition there.

The specialty to this lens is that Voigtländer changed the lens design of the Heliars from time to time.
They even designed the famous "Master Optic" - the Universal Heliar.
For doing this Voigtländer grabbed one of their common Heliar designs and simply made one lensgroup therein shiftable, which, once moved from grade one to five, of course gives great Weichzeichnung / Soft Focus.

I was happy to see from the production number that my Heliar has the Universal Heliar design but with fixed lens groups - which only will need some refreshing of this fixed design for a transfer into " Universal":)
 
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Does anyone know anything about this one, is it worth anything and will it cover 5x4

IMG_1200.JPG
 
All I can say is that some Aplanat types come with a sensational behaviour which gives really "deep" and soulful results.
This types which seem to need more focal length for showing its qualities( but with saying this I may be wrong) are difficult to learn because of their aperture shift which doens't mean the focus shift but will result in focus shift.

Me too, I own one of this tiny Aplanat lenses but haven't tried out yet.
Here's a picture called "Silence" from Jutta Anbau with an ancient and longer barrel design Aplanat (without the description "extra rapid" a phantastic german hobby photographer who has a great sense for understanding lenses and making pictures:

STILLE~1.JPG
 
Ian-Barber said:
Does anyone know anything about this one, is it worth anything and will it cover 5x4

View attachment 4081
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It's a Houghton Butcher lens off a roll film camera, it is unlikely to cover 5x4. Most likely 127 or 120.

H.B.M. Co. Ltd. stands for Houghton-Butcher Manufacturing Co which was formed in 1915, the company became Ensign in the 1930s. Butcher manufactured some cameras for Houghtons from 1904 onwards, although they had close links they didn't fully merge until 1926.

Ian
 
In my experience it is very likely that a lens designed for rollfilm will cover 4x5".
As far as the image circle will cover the negative size every lens is useable.
It's a great thing eliminating the environment of, let's say a portrait, with a miserable lens behaviour to the edges :)

Or think about macro photography.
The image circle will be doubled with a ratio of 1:1, so there the lens is very useable!

Once I stretched the bellows of my 5x7" Plaubel Profia; I distorted the standards of the Plaubel end exposed a 4x5" dia slide with light coming through a rollfilm format lens called Wollensak Oscilloraptar.


diamos.jpg

Forget the technical specs, forget the eversharp lenses, but think in an aesthetical sense :)
 
Common lens/technical specs <> special lens for certain requirements:

The last day I bought a once typical "landscape lens" only because it's lens design.
This lenses have no design - they are single lens meniscus optics with miserable optical mistakes like spaerical and chromatic abberations.
So to me they are very useful :)

Originally closed to f11 or f16, sometimes to f22, the abbertations are eliminated and the meniscus performs well as every lens will do once closed down.
Lancaster.JPG


Uncorking to the maximum opening the lens will change to a (special lens) heavy soft focus lens giving all I need from blur over fuzz up to glow.

The blossom of a cactus seen through a digital camera with the meniscus simply handhold in front as my first experiment:

DSC01786aa.jpg

Tamron Meniscus.jpg


Seems to be from the Pricktorialism stream :)
 
Talking of Aplanats, my Emil Busch's Aplanat Shutter Set, Model C, arrived today. This is a combination casket set.

busch02sm.jpg

busch03sm.jpg

busch01.jpg

As you can see from the box lid even the 6" combination covers 5x4 stopped down. The optics are in excellent condition.

The shutter has issues, a diaphragm blade is unseated, the tab on the Unicum shutter's release arm is broken off, the shutter needs a CLA. However luckily I have a broken Unicum shutter that is the same size. The aperture mechanism can be removed intact, it's held in place with three screws, so it is a simple swap, I can also swap the release arm, just one screw need removing. These are quite simple shutters to clean.

Should be a fun lens to use as it has the cobinations for 6", 7". 8", 9", 10", 12", 15" and 20" focal lengths, and so can be used on my 10x8 or 7x5 cameras as well.

Ian
 
Ian Grant said:
These are quite simple shutters to clean.
Click to expand...

Yes.
But I never found them working well; either the springs are too weak or the damper has seen his best times long ago.
Or both :)

I only kept a 240mm Rapid Rectilinear brass lens in Unicum shutter because of it's lovely appearance but without a real shutter function.
 
David M said:

This links to a PDF of a Dallmeyer catalogue from 1996.
Page 8 describes a “variable sharpness” portrait lens. Or perhaps it’s a variable depth of field. It makes me think of Julia Margaret Cameron’s “artistic focus.
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A century out David :D My lens was made 33 years earlier than that catalogue, it's a 10" f4 Dallmeyer Quick Acting Portrait Petzval, the Extra Quick Acting lenses are f3 lenses, The original range of Quick Acting Portrait Petzvals introduced in 1860 were available in Focal Lengths from 5" to 16" and were "Petzvals with improved spherical correction." It would have been a No 3B.

The variable sharpness is controlled by the spacing of the Front & Rear cells, Dallmeyer added control of this to the lens barrel.

Ian
 
Oops! well spotted. Corrected. Thank you.
Much the same thing is now a feature on phones. Everything comes around again.
I was interested in how words have changes - “quickness” is charming.
 
David M said:
Oops! well spotted. Corrected. Thank you.
Much the same thing is now a feature on phones. Everything comes around again.
I was interested in how words have changes - “quickness” is charming.
Click to expand...


What's a hundred years, give or take, between friends?
 
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