The Computar lens and ULF coverage.

[Kerry L. Thalmann]

Kerry, do you have a list of the focal length in which the Germinar-W was made?

Sandy,

Off the top of my head...

150mm, 210mm, 240mm, 305mm and 360mm. I believe all but the 360mm are direct fit in standard Copal shutters (No. 0 for the 150mm, No. 1 for the 210mm, 240mm and 305mm). I believe the 360mm requires an adapter for one of the cells to fit in a Copal No. 3 shutter.

My sources for this information are Arne Croell and Joerg Krusche. Arne had a real good two-part article on the Zeiss VEB and Docter Optic lenses in View Camera last year. I don't remember the exact issues off the top of my head (sometime in the second half of last year), but part 2 of the article covered the Docter Optic lenses, including the Germinar-W lenses.

Kerry

[Kerry L. Thalmann]

Anyone have the year and month of this article?

Sandy,

I don't have my back issues with me, but I'll check tonight.

In the meantime, if you have your back issues handy...

I believe it was in the 1992 - 1994 time frame, possibly Nov/Dec 1993.

Kerry

[sanking]

Kerry,

My god, you were right. The article is in the Nov/Dec 1993 issue.

You must have an incredible memory. I would not have remembered the information if it had been in the Nov/Dec 2003 number.

Thanks.

[Kerry L. Thalmann]

My god, you were right. The article is in the Nov/Dec 1993 issue.

You must have an incredible memory.

My siblings constantly tease me about being able to remember events that happened before I was born.

While I do have a good memory, especially for numbers (I still remember the license plate numbers for cars I drove back in the 1980s, phone numbers of my high school friends from the 1970s and birthdays of kids I went to elementary school with back in the 1960s - scary), in this case I must confess I cheated a bit. I remembered the article had the phrase "Semi-Wide Lenses" in the title. So, I went to the View Camera web site, opened their back issues index and did a search on that phrase.

BTW, a while back they converted the back issue index to PDF format, which is searchable. I have a complete collection of the magazine going all the way back to Volume 1 Issue 1. When I want to find a specific article or subject, I find searching the PDF a lot easier than wading through 16 years of back issues.

Kerry

[Steve Hamley]

Sandy,

I believe the 360 Kowa is not a plasmat. The reflection pattern I get from the front and rear cells of my 360 Kowa Graphic are two inverted very close images, and two wider spaced upright images. I get exactly the same pattern from my 19" Artar.

In contrast, my 240 Computar has exactly the same reflection pattern as my 270 G-Claron: 4 evenly spaced upright images. I do get a ghost on the G-Claron that I can't see in the Computar, but the Computar's area is much smaller and maybe I'm just not seeing the ghost.

Anyway, I think the probability is that the 360 Kowa is a dialyte.

Steve

[sanking]

"Anyway, I think the probability is that the 360 Kowa is a dialyte."

Steve,

I wonder if the entire Kowa line was not changed at some point to the dialyte design?

[tim atherton]

"I wonder if the entire Kowa line was not changed at some point to the dialyte design?"

I'm not sure. My experience with the Kowa 210mm is about the same as Jim Galli's with the same lens I think.

I get at least 380+ mm of coverage/usable image circle @f22 with mine - not as much as the 460mm listed for the Computar 210, but much more than I got with a G-Claron 210mm - which I found gave about to be about 325/335mm at most @f22 (and starting to go slightly soft at that)

(example - today I was out using the Kowa 210 on 8x10 and at one point I used at least 2 1/2" of fall (with focus over 50') and I wasn't running out of image circle @f32 - not a hint of darkening or softenss in the corners of the neg)

[tim atherton]

I meant to add... so if it was a dialyte design, I wouldn't be likely to be getting that kind of coverage with the 210mm would I?

[Steve Hamley]

Sandy,

Maybe, or maybe just the long ones? Tim posted on the other ULF thread that his Kowa 210 had coverage that would indicate it was not a dialyte.

Thanks!

Steve

[Dan Fromm]

Steve, about those reflections. Spacing doesn't matter, count by brightness does.

A plasmat should show four bright reflections and one dim one in each cell. The dim one may be very hard to see. That's four air-glass interfaces, one glass-cement-glass.

Dagor types should show two bright and two dim reflections in each cell. Again, the dim ones may be hard to see. Two air-glass interfaces, two glass-cement-glass.

Dialytes, e.g., Apo Artar, Apo Ronar, and four element double Gauss types, e.g., WF Ektar, Process Nikkor, should show four bright reflections in each cell. Four air-glass interfaces.

Tessars should show four bright reflections in the front cell; two bright, one dim in the rear cell. Reversed tessars have'em the other way 'round.

And so on.

FWIW, by this logic my 150/9 Konica Hexanon GRII and 160/5.6 Pro Raptar are plasmats and, as Tim Atherton and I have discussed, the 210/9 GRII, which has six bright reflections on each side, is 3,3 with no cemented elements.

Any coverage measurements/SWAGs for GRIIs or Pro Raptars out there?

Yours for the spread of confusion in ever widening circles,

Dan