UlF soft focus lens

[clay harmon]

Maybe I have been extremely lucky, but the soft focus lenses I have purchased have HUGE image circles. Admittedly,they are soft in the corners - go figure! For instance, the 12" Kodak portrait lens I have actually will illuminate an entire 12x20 frame at infinity. Ditto the 405mm Kodak portrait lens. I have a 16.5 inch verito that will cover 12x20 as well. I think a lot of the published figures are very conservative, and you will be well served to try a lens on your camera rather than relying on information floating around on the internet.

I recently sold a 250 imagon on ebay, and several people felt the need to tell me that my assertion in the listing that it would cover an 8x10 was false. They based this on information they had been told or read on the Rodenstock site. But none of these people had actually TRIED it. If you put the imagon on my deardorff, it covered with no problems whatsover... Empirical knowledge trumps theory any day.

[robert_4927]

Clay, I wasn't aware that wollensak made a 16.5 verito. I have only seen 14 1/2 " and 18" veritos. Are you sure it isn't a veritar or a vitax ? If it's a verito I would love to see a picture of it. Thanks,

[William_4390]

There will be a 14x17 f6 Wollensak Versar on ebay in the next week or so. It's quite an amazing lens, really. The Versar lenses don't get the press of the Veritar or Veritos, but I think they have a much more interesting look.

[Ernest Purdum]

There were some monster lenses made. The largest I know of were made by Dallmeyer. In Series A, the f4 version, The Number 6 had a focal lenghth of 30" (762mm) and was rated to cover 16" X 20". The Number 8D was a 37" f6 lens covering 20" X 22". Both models had lens diameters of six inches.



The problem, of course, would be finding one. When new they were extremely expensive, up to $427.00 when you could buy an 8" X 10" Eastman View for $30.00. To go with it, you needed not only a big, very sturdy camera, but a big studio. It would be surprising if many were ever made.

[Kerry L. Thalmann]

My suggestion would have been to look for long Heliars, but Kerry beat me to it...

While standard Heliars are excellent lenses, one nice feature of the Universal Heliar is the ability to adjust the degreee of softness independent of the aperture. This allows stopping down to gain depth of field (say tip of nose and eyes both in focus) and then dialing in the desired diffusion. This is especially handy in lenses of such long focal length. Most of the older soft focus lenses have nicely diffused highlights down to about f8, but gradually sharpen up as you stop down. On many of theses lenses, by the time you get to f22 the soft focus effect is pretty much gone. Some manufacturers promotoed this quality in their lenses (soft at wide apertures, sharp when stopped down). That's how the Spencer Port-Land got it's name. It was a portrait lens at large apertures, but suitable for sharp landscapes when stopped down.

Kerry

[Armin Seeholzer]

Hi

Clay has right re the Imagon 250mm covers easy 8x10 and I remember even at full open I one time had to shift my 4x5 Sinar full up and to tilt a bit was not a problem at all.
It covers 8x10 even at infinity!
So an 480mm Imagon would have a uge image circle!
Good luck in finding one!

[e]

A 250mm Fuji SF will cover at portrait distances as a nice WA SF lens. You can hyperfocal it out at infinity stopped down too with mixed results. I've used this on 12x20 with interesting dreamy effects. The f5.6 makes viewing easy. And it comes in a Copal 3S so you can plop your Computars in there too. Emile www.deleon-ulf.com

[David Flockhart]

The Imagon 420 is a fairly rare bird (may be one on Ebay now). I have one that easily covers 11x14. This lens allows extreme to nonexistent soft focus.

[CXC]

I'm intrigued to hear about someone looking for LESS sharpness in ULF. So many strive for more, and more, and more...

[Jan Van Hove]

Well, CXC,

Sharpness is not the only reason to go into ULF...
Contact printing methods don't all yield high sharpness results, Oil prints for example, don't need very high sharpness...
And there are probably more reasons..

PJ