Verito in the landscape?

[Shen45]

I recently acquired a 9" Verito and a 14" Veliostigmat II from the Nevada lens mine. They are truly beautiful pieces of glass. I have started doing some initial tests with both lenses for portraits and cannot get over how soft and yet sharp the images are. The look is really different to modern glass. I know that is an obvious statement but until you actually use one of these lenses you aren't really aware of the differences

I'm wondering if anyone has used the Verito for landscape work. Not the grand view so much but more the intimate water scene etc?

Does anyone have any examples of images they have done?

I hope to get out and shoot some film tomorrow but with Australia in a massive drought water scenes are not on the menu.

Steve

[Jim collum]

i've used the Cooke soft focus lens for landscape shots.. i have some examples at

cooke examples

[Shen45]

Thanks Jim,

Although different lenses I imagine the 9" [229mm] Verito is somewhat similar to the Cooke in the way it handles the elements of a landscape. Selection of the subject would need to be carefully considered I suspect. I believe my Verito is about 1910 - 1920 vintage.

The Nevada lens miner did a very good job of restoring it and the studio shutter -- which now by the way works beautifully fully open to f4.5.
Must have been the plane flight back to Australia and the very curious xray scans at "every" airport security. Brass barrel lenses seem to get security attention as they appear solid.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I've tried it. If you're an APUG subscriber, you can see a sample shot here (I think if you're not a subscriber, you just get a thumbnail)--

http://www.apug.org/gallery/showphot...=500&ppuser=60

You can see other shots of the same scene with other lenses if you click on "see this user's gallery."

I think the Verito works best with hard light and/or another means of increasing contrast, like using a red filter or extending development. If the light is too soft to begin with, it all turns to mush. You'll find most of the glowing effect happens between f:4 and f:8.

[Jack Flesher]

I used a 9" Verit*ar* for a few color landscape images and found it wonderful. I would have bought it except I already had a Cooke Portrait.

[jnantz]

hi steve

i have a verito, but haven't had a chance to stray too far away from shooting portraits with it. i do however have an ilex seminat ( 1920s f3.5 ) and a 10" veritar that i have shot some things with ...

have fun!

-john

[william linne]

Here's one made with the Wollensak Versar, which I find to be the most interesting of all the Wollensak Portrait lenses.

http://static.flickr.com/103/288562282_0aa660dc27.jpg

[Andrew O'Neill]

Where do you guys find such lenses? Does the Nevada lens miner have a website?

[Frank Petronio]

This thread is making me so excited! Tim Sharkey has my old new Verito and I can't wait to get it back (in a shutter no less!)

[Jonathan Brewer]

Googling Jim Galli should give a bunch of links, also 'cameraeccentric' has old brochures with pictures and specs of these classic/brass/soft focus lenses.

Lens and Repro has a section devoted to soft focus, and there is Tepper, and some others I can't think of, also check out old, so called 'vintage'/'antique' cameras for sale that are sometimes sold for next to nothing, folks don't know what the lens is on the camera, and think because it's brass/old looking, that it's near useless for shooting.

These folks here know all this, but many times you can come up with a classic lens in some category nobody's looking for, or in the case of my Gundlach Meniscis, I think I got the a 'jump' on everybody since whoever did up the ad mis-spelled the name of the lens.

The good part is that these lenses are now getting their due, unfortunately, now that everybody knows about 'em, where before, you could get some of these lenses for $5-$10-$25-$50.00, a good Velostigmat II w/the 1-5 soft focus control @$150.00 or more is still the equal some of the more expensive portrait/classic/soft focus lenses going a grand and up.

Jim Galli to his credit, has almost single handedly changed the mindset of a lot of folks as making photography w/these lenses, 'Nevada Lens Mine', I luv it.