Ektar Suggestions

[Otto Seaman]

A 72mm filter or shade will usually thread mount ~ roughly ~ onto a 14" Commercial Ektar.

[John Conway]

A 72mm filter or shade will usually thread mount ~ roughly ~ onto a 14" Commercial Ektar.

I have a 72mm (or it may be a 67mm) set up for the Lindahl that I use on my 250 6.3 Fuji. When you say "roughly" what do you mean. If the Ektar has a 72mm thread it will make me happy.

[Peter York]

I absolutely love my 12" commercial, but the shutter renders it unuseable these days. Definitely check the shutter condition, and most likely, budget for a CLA.

[Otto Seaman]

I have a 72mm (or it may be a 67mm) set up for the Lindahl that I use on my 250 6.3 Fuji. When you say "roughly" what do you mean. If the Ektar has a 72mm thread it will make me happy.

It's not threaded for 72mm but you can still get it on for a turn.

[Tin Can]

Check Calumet for new C1 lens boards. Try Chicago. They still had them within the last 3 months.

I also use the Chicago and Michigan eBay guys for cheap wood C1 adapter boards. PDG.

I'm listening. My choice will be between a 12" and 14" commercial. I'm glad the filter issue was mentioned. I've managed to put together a wonderful collection of Harrison glass filters in diffusion and black dot sets of five that have given me wonderful results on 4X5. I'll just have to figure out how to mount my Lindahl bellow shade onto an Ektar lens. Lindahl must have made an adapter for the Ektar. Then there is the issue of a lens board for the C1. I see wood boards for sale everywhere but I want metal. Maybe Calumet has new metal boards.

[Don Dudenbostel]

I had gotten pretty much out of LF film a year ago and sold most of my 8x10 glass. I decided I wanted to get back in and bought a 5x7 and 8x10 Deardorff. I was faced with only a 240 G Claron that would cover it and decided to go for less expensive and more vintage glass. I searched and finally settled on a near mint 12" Connercial that had perfect glass and a fresh CLA. It even has the original metal cap. I got it for $400 so its possible to find clean ones at a good price.

I've shot LF for nearly fifty years and used one or more ektars continuously over that time along with more modern glass. I've had two 12" commercial, two 203 f7.7 Ektars and still have one, a 250 wfEktar for forty years and used a 135 AF and was the only one I didn't care for. IMO they're all fine. The negative IMO is the #5 shutter in the 14 & 10" Wf. Parts are hard to come by and they are very large and bulky.

I used my 10" wf since 1972 and sold it a few years ago and replaced it with a very nice Fuji 250 f6.7. Wish I had done this years ago. The Fuji was very small relative to the Ektar and just as fine if not better with a huge image circle too. Also it was in a modern copal 1 shutter vs the massive #5 Ilex.

[Don Dudenbostel]

Keep in mind the commercial Ektar is just a Tessar as are Xenar, Many Ilex lenses, Congo and many others. Kodak did a nice job making them but there's no magic in them vs other makers Tessars. Tessar lenses are simple and very good no matter the maker.

[Wayne Lambert]

A 72mm screws in perfectly on my 14" CE.

Wayne

[Bernice Loui]

In the pile:

Xenar, Commercial Ektar, APO Tessar, Paragon and ... They may all be tessar designs, still the resulting images are not the same and each have their distinct personalities..

Over the years of tinkering with lenses, there were more than a few poor performing lenses both vintage and new.

The tessar design continues to be looked down upon by more than a few..


Bernice

Keep in mind the commercial Ektar is just a Tessar as are Xenar, Many Ilex lenses, Congo and many others. Kodak did a nice job making them but there's no magic in them vs other makers Tessars. Tessar lenses are simple and very good no matter the maker.

[ridax]

Xenar, Commercial Ektar, APO Tessar, Paragon and ... They may all be tessar designs, still the resulting images are not the same and each have their distinct personalities... there were more than a few poor performing lenses both vintage and new. The tessar design continues to be looked down upon by more than a few.

And I'd add that besides the noticeable difference between the individual tessar incarnations, there is a significant family difference between the f/6.3 and slower tessars - and the f/4.5 and faster ones. The f/6.3's (and f/9's) have the astigmatism almost perfectly corrected (though they may still have some field curvature), and so they tend to be pretty sharp - on the level the best plasmats are. A f/4.5 tessar just can't be made like that. Those have their radial and tangential 'planes' of actual focus curved in the opposite directions resulting in a lot of residual astigmatism (which is zero only in the very center and in just one field point where the radial and the tangential focus 'planes' intersect). This is the very reason the fast tessars are never as sharp as the best modern glasses. The faster the tessar and the more angle it is intended to cover, the greater the astigmatism and the poorer the tessar's sharpness. (Yes there is also the coma issue as well as the others but most of those are eliminated or greatly reduced with stopping down, and the astigmatism is not.) The slow tessars are usually free from the astigmatism problem.

That said, I personally have never seen a f/6.3 or a slower tessar as beautiful in its out of focus rendition as the best of the faster ones (to say nothing of the Dagor) - at least if you don't move the tessar's front element (and as the out of focus rendition gets better with such displacement, the sharpness degrades quite a bit). I guess calculating a slow 'highly anastigmatic' tessar with a decent amount of residual spherical aberration for the pictorial beauty of the image is entirely possible but I'm afraid no lens maker ever bothered to produce a tessar like that. :(