I am planning to venture into a new world of discovery with my new interest in vintage lenses. Unfortunately I am not that experienced with large format vintage lenses and have only used vintage glass with Leica cameras until recently. I shoot large format with a 4x5 Wisner camera and recently fell in love with a purchase of a minty Schneider Angulon f6.8/12cm lens with synchro-compur shutter. I quickly became hooked on vintage glass—smooth tonal transitions and bokeh.
I am actually considering a sharp but smooth vintage lens for landscape use in the slight to moderately long lens category for 4x5 application. However, I am also interested in a (dual purpose) lens (or second dedicated lens) that can work well for soft luminous aberrations in portraiture and table top fine art.
I understand that the Wollensak Verito is legendary as a true soft portrait lens, and I love what I have seen done with the Voigtlander Heliar lens in limited depth of field and smooth transitions of high values and tonal separation. I have three primary questions to ask of those with far more expertise than myself in this area.
1) Assuming (dual purpose) Does the Heliar work well for distant subjects as in landscape use? If so, which Heliar lens design works best for this application—Heliar Defocus/Dynar Type/Universal Helair models?
2) I am not knowledgeable of the Kodak Portrait lens, but would this lens present itself as a dual purpose lens?
3) Is it best to go with two distinctively different lenses to obtain a smooth but sharp landscape image, and then a second lens purchase for soft focus applications, or can a dual purpose lens approach work for my descriptions?
Thanks for contributing to this discussion thread.
—Mark Booth
Issaquah, WA. USA
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