Old Lenses... Which Are The Stand Outs?

[Bill_1856]

Any Goerz, Carl Zeiss, or Kodak LF lens is gonna be good. (This doesn't include those removed from "folders" and sold for LF.) One good indication is to review what St. Ansel used - he was an equipment freak and always used the best equipment that his wife could afford.

[RE]

Andrew,

It sounds like you want to use old lenses rather than collect them. This means that there are some questions you should ask before buying one. Have the lens and shutter been cleaned recently and have the shutter speeds been tested to determine what they really are? If not, do you know a technician who knows old lenses? What will he charge? Does the lens offer an acceptable range of shutter speeds and apertures? If you use filters, can you buy filters that will fit the lens or will you have to have an adaptor made?

Then there's a rather important question that you can answer only if you can either try the lens before you buy it or return it for a full refund: Do you like the way that the lens performs?

Personally, I own a 10" Wollensak Veritar. I would not use this lens on a day-to-day basis, but I love it when the light and subject are right.

Regarding your question about where you can buy old lenses, one reputable source is Lens and Repro in New York.

[John Kasaian]

For a 4x5 kit, the 203 Ektar and the 135 wf ektar will serve you well. The 203 is a dialyte like the Artar which Morley Baer used and the 135 wf is a gauss like AA's well loved 10" Wide field that he used on his 8x10. The 8"(or is it 8-1/2"?) Wollensak Verito is the kind of lens Hurrell used for many of his famous Hollywood portraits (I believe there is an article on these lenses in The Large Frmat Photography Home Page.) Another usedful Wolly is the 162 Velostigmat(Or Raptar in its more modern, coated incarnation) I don't know of anyone famous who used these, but IMHO they are nice! Anything thats a Dagor or Artar of course, providing you've got the bellows to handle them. I've never had the opportunity to use an Angulon---some like them, some don't. Beware of many excellent press lenses that earned a living on old Speed Graphics---many are excellent (the 127 Ektar comes to mind)but offer little in the way of movements so you'll run out of image circle in a hurry if you want to play with perspective control.

With older lenses, the condition of the shutter is really important. The Kodaks will usually be found in Flashmatics, Wollensaks in Alphax, Betax, and Rapax shutters, the Goerz will most likely be in a Ilex or Compur. With the exception of the early Ilex model thats a copy of the Compur dialset(it looks like a little face wearing a moustache),these shutters are quite usable and serviceable. Even if balky, they'll usually respond to a cla and once again be good ctizens.

Equinox Photographic, Igor's Camera, and Mid West Photo are the first places I'd look if Ebay wasn't such perverse fun!

[Ernest Purdum]

Andrew, the reason "203mm" ia so often mentioned is that this Ektar lens is a different design from all of the othe Ektars. Many lens names, Tessar, Heliar, Dagor, Artar being examples, tell the design, so, for example, any Artar will be the same design regardless of focal length.. Others, like Ektar and Raptar, were applied to lenses of several designs. With a Protar or a Cooke, you have to know the "Series" (nearly always expressed in Roman numerals). The Protar Series VII ( the convertible type) and V (a tiny extreme wide angle type) are the most common and also the most desirable.



Re "certainly every focal length Dagor can't be wonderful?" Choosing a lens type, and a lens focal length, are two different decisions. Any Dagor focal length is equally wonderful when used on an appropriate format size film. A Dagor virtue is a fairly wide working angle, particularly when well stopped down. As a result, on 4X5 a "normal" Dagor, meaning one with a focal length near the film diagonal, about 150mm, allows considerable use of movements. On the other hand, a shorter focal length Dagor could be used of a wide angle view was desired.

[Alex Hawley]

Kodak Commercial Ektars do it for me. I currently have two, an 8-1/2" (210mm) and 12" (300mm). They have never let me down yet, and both were made in the late 1940's.

[robert_4927]

I'd have to included my goerz trigor blue dot 14"....covers like a dagor but sharper than an artar

[billy bob]

I've shot with a lot of lenses. New, old, semi-old. Dagors, Meyer plasmats, Nikors, Ektars, Sironars, Super Angulons. The sharpest lens that I own is a Zeiss Tessar 165mm. The big 165. There are two kinds of Tessars, the little uns and the big uns. I have seven littles and two bigs. The 165 and a 180, both of which cover 5x7 with movement. The 180 is good, but the 165 is so sharp it makes my eyes hurt. I got it on a camera, for a hundred bucks. Find one with a six digit serial # and have a chuckle about people throwing money away on Lanthars.