5 grand? What am I missing?

[Laszlo]

Check this out:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Goerz-Berlin-75m...QQcmdZViewItem

[cyrus]

Pfffttt!
5 measley grand? Heck its only money...

Is the dollar that weak?

[Jim Galli]

Legendary lens. it covered 140 degrees. A 75mm probably covers 10X12. Nothing else on earth save a pinhole can do that. Sadly it resolves about like a pinhole which is quite cheaper. Originally it had a little fan that spun up in front of the element and acted as a centre filter.

[Arne Croell]

Also, the seller is "photo-arsenal-germany", fomer ebay handle was "arsenall". His starting prices are usually 2-3 times higher than the final price of the same lens in another auction. I assume he caters mostly to rich collectors.

[neil poulsen]

Maybe a museum can afford it.

[Ole Tjugen]

Legendary lens. it covered 140 degrees. A 75mm probably covers 10X12. Nothing else on earth save a pinhole can do that. Sadly it resolves about like a pinhole which is quite cheaper. Originally it had a little fan that spun up in front of the element and acted as a centre filter.

Not this one...

The Hypergon was sold in two mount versions, with and without the fan. The ones without the fan were a bit cheaper and were rated to 110 degrees while they covered 135 degrees with the fan. As a rough estimate, the image circle is 3x focal length without and 5x with the fan. So this 75mm would cover roughly 225mm, or just 5x7". With a fan it should be just usable on 10x12" at 375mm image circle.

This particular sample puzzles me a little, since it's sold as a "pre-series" yet the focal length is given in mm, not cm as was common at that time (I'm referring to a 1910 photography book, and the Hypergon was a production item then. With cm focal lengths).

Come to that, nearly everything this seller lists puzzles me. Even though I must confess to having bought a (cheap!) lens or two from him myself...

[Arne Croell]

This particular sample puzzles me a little, since it's sold as a "pre-series" yet the focal length is given in mm, not cm as was common at that time (I'm referring to a 1910 photography book, and the Hypergon was a production item then. With cm focal lengths).

Ole, millimeters for focal length where quite common in the German optical industry before 1900 and a few years after. Only after that did they switch to cm's, and of course back to mm's after WWII (with the exception of Voigtländer, who continued with cm for their LF lenses until they stopped production).

[Ole Tjugen]

Thanks, Arne.

My 1910 book lists everything in centimeters, and the picture of the Hypergon in that book is clear enough to see that it's given in centimeters. There's always more to learn, and another exception to every rule...

PS: I had to check, of course. And yes, my Apo-Lanthar is a 15cm f:4.5

[Ongarine]

I used many years ago a 60 mm. with fan to make a 10x12 cm. slide of a ceiling in a church.......it was not so easy and the Ektas flew as water in the fall.
Hypergon could be interesting not at that incredible high price :-) it has problems of focus and the corner are never so sharp when used with the extreme format covered.
It is in my High Prized list of overvalue LF lenses.......

[Arne Croell]

PS: I had to check, of course. And yes, my Apo-Lanthar is a 15cm f:4.5

And it is one of the great unsolved mysteries of LF lens lore, WHY Voigtländer decided to stay with cm's - only for LF lenses, mind you - when everybody else including Zeiss, their mothership from 1956 on, had gone back to mm.