Not an un-common question these days and of course the best advice is to immediately plop down any amount Jim Galli asks for on his various and sundry salesOriginally Posted by Ron Bose
I thought it would be fun to bring this to the forums and let all the voices get heard, pro and con, not just mine.
I absolutely love Ernest Purdum's opener on his excellent article about this. I hope he won't mind if I steal it for a minute.
Critic A: "This image has a certain ethereal quality.
Critic B: "It's a fuzzy picture."
That's it in a nutshell. Some of us see ethereal glowing tonalities like falling into a box full of pillows, and others see a lot of balderdash. Very subjective and no one's right or wrong.
I can put a little tech spin (very little) on it. The older non coated lenses with up to 8 air-glass interfaces at 4% image loss for each one introduce less contrast and more non image forming light to the film than your modern lenses do. In some cases a lot more. That tends to soften all of the transitions. Now on 4X5, to me at least, that just dis-appoints. But in 8X10 and larger I see a different effect. There's still plenty of sharpness to define, but I see a LOT of added tonality and glow with the old lenses. Almost anyone that pages through some of the stuff on my web site can begin to get infected.
What say ye...? Which are the best lenses to start with? I'll vote for the Venerable Wollensak Verito. There seem to still be plenty of them and while other classic name lenses go through the roof, they still seem a good value for soft focus. Wolly Velostigmat Series II is another old favorite. And occasionally you can steal a projection petzval.
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