Russian/Soviet LF lenses

**panchro-press** · 13-Mar-2008, 09:53

Does anyone have information on pre-revolution LF Russian lenses; or LF lenses made during the Soviet period?

**Dan Fromm** · 13-Mar-2008, 10:05

Go here: http://www.photohistory.ru/Aircameralens.html , to find more click on the links at the bottom of the page. Go to the top level (www.photohistory.ru), click on the links there; in red, again. You do read Russian, don't you?

Also go here: http://www.baierfoto.de/russobj/objektive.html for more info. Some of my lenses don't agree with this guy, though.

**panchro-press** · 14-Mar-2008, 04:20

Surprised they're not showing up for sale. Could be some bookeh gems.

**Ole Tjugen** · 14-Mar-2008, 04:41

They do show up, and quite frequently too. But far more often on ebay.de than on ebay.com...

**Dan Fromm** · 14-Mar-2008, 05:37

Um, er, ah, p-p, only a few design types were made in the former Soviet Union that cover more than nominal 6x6:

tessar types -- not of interest to bookeh nuts

4/4 double Gauss process lenses, relatively uncommon -- likewise

a variety of types for aerial camera -- like western lenses for aerial cameras, mostly very hard to use and not that common

Ole, there are almost always a couple of LF Industar (another way of spelling tessar) lenses on eBay.com, also f/9 tessar type process lenses. The double Gauss types I mentioned, f/10 RF-2, -3, and -4 are much less abundant but do show up.

**Ole Tjugen** · 14-Mar-2008, 06:25

There are a couple more types even if they're even rarer, and every once in a while you can find something utterly unknown from before the revolution...

But even Tessars may not be uninteresting:

This is a simple 300mm f:4.5 Schneider Xenar on 5x7" film. The extreme swing shows the difference in front- and back-bokeh.

And then there's the elusive f:3.5 Xenar Typ D. Mine is a reverse Tessar, and it goes really, really swirly...