Meandering discussion about the utility of aerial lenses

[buggz]

Amen, I had a hard time when showing all my soft pastel images in a popular forum, what little I post.
Everyone there seemed to like harsh contrast, saturated, over sharpened images.
Shrug...
Thus my humble start into LF.
I really like the diversity in this forum.
I love all the information and learning new things and new perspectives.

Better than modern...........

Worse than modern.............

Some of us are working to a different goal than 68 line pairs in a millimeter. An uncoated Cooke Aviar with 8 air glass interfaces is not something that wins in a comparison to a multi-coated plasmat. But there are some who are bored to tears with multi-coated Plasmat look. So better & worse are highly relative terms to the user's intent.

Each lens must be used to make actual pictures and then evaluated for what it does or doesn't bring to the table relative to the user's vision, not line pairs per millimeter.

Process lenses and aerial lenses are not the first place I look for what I want a lens to do, but there are some exceptions. An f2.5 or 2.9 lens might have something for a 4X5 user that normally can't get that shallow a depth of field any other way. And the Aviar does have a pleasing look.........to me.

[europanorama]

Dan,

What an encyclopedic knowledge you have collected! I atually read through your entire adventure and wonder how on earth your family dealt with all the arrivals!


Joseph,

That hernia giving lens is a sculpture!



Jim,

Yours are beautiful! I like the images and the characteristic soft periphery you are infamous for! Shows one of the 2 great values of these aerial lenses: wide open for art or portraits or even landscape. You have excelled here! How heavy is heavy? Is this bigger than a Visual Quality? This might be fun to shoot with.


Klaus,

Here's my hypothesis. "There might be an deal combination of aerial or survey lens and camera format with film that could deliver exceptional resolution and color in one of the common Large camera formats."

Obviously, using 8x10 and a great modern lens I already can acquire a lot of detail. But going down to just 5x7 where some of the better aerial or surveying lenses might cover, it could be that one ends up with more detail.



So, Guys,

Where is the sweet spot for the most refined aerial lenses for landscape or macro with 8x10, 5x7 or 4x5 format that can be tamed to a practical relationship with the camera for the highest resolution for available B&W and or color film film in that format.

I see Lumnars in a yellow 5x7 surveying camera minus the surveying frame that are asking $4800 or so!

Using a glass plate is hardly practical for these shots to match up with the precision surfaces, unless the plates are readily available. Same with 5" rollfilm to match the lens MTF. What's practical. I have no problem getting a 5x7 back or else a second camera if the lens could delver stellar performance.

The guy who sells the Jena and the like aerial and survey lenses appears to be nice interesting fellow and dedicated but I have not found any pictures to match the selling prices and there's no Jena or Czech Republic factory to call and get brochures, LOL! Who has had these lenses. Why are there no pictures? Why only one eBay seller of the Lamogen and most of the relatives?

A pity Zeiss Jena closed! What a huge loss!

Asher

I have a small CD showing old russian cams which i had never seen elsewhere also not in udsscameraforum. got it from KMZ officially. But they only show no lists. and specifications.

[europanorama]

Asher, your application sounds perfect for a scanning or rotating panoramic camera. You get cylindrical perspective for free, and the lens only needs to cover the short dimension of the image, which boosts your chances of ultimate sharpness.

If you must use an aerial model, there were prism-scan cameras with Biogons inside which imaged onto MF film. Otherwise your best bet in analogue would be to join the Circut brigade.

But. Were it me, I would look seriously at the use of a scanning back in panoramic mode. Jim Collum has shown some great examples here in the forum.

do you mean messkammer-kameras? These are multiple cameras with prisms which are aimed to get overlapping images. information from zeiss-manager.

[Dan Fromm]

do you mean messkammer-kameras? These are multiple cameras with prisms which are aimed to get overlapping images. information from zeiss-manager.

Pardon me for jumping in. Absolutely not. No.

Struan was referring to cameras like the Fairchild KB-18. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gnr9P9VYLg and http://www.chancefac.net/fac_book/0-...strike_cam.htm He was not referring to cameras used for photogrammetry. Aerial cameras used for photogrammetry use the aircraft's motion to get the displacement needed for stereo photography.

I don't know where he came up with the idea of "prism-scan cameras with Biogons inside."

[Jac@stafford.net]

I will not show my 'best pictures' using the few aerial lenses I have because there is no remarkable quality attributable to the lenses for earth-bound (not celestial) photography. If I were to do aerial photography I still would not use them in any camera but the one built around the particular aerial lens. A bit of funny was trying to figure out how to work without the Réseau plate built into a camera. That curiosity went away quickly.

To the best of my knowledge, aerial survey lenses are tested wide-open regardless of whether they have a diaphragm. There is where some lenses shine, in particular a late Biogon. IMHO! But I doubt they perform better than later biogons. (One possible difference is with the 3" Pacific Optical which has a rear lens larger than 4x5 thus has little appreciable fall-off when used over 4x5, but 'better' aesthetically it is not)

I worked at Upper Heyford Air Force Base with American and some British forces when it was an air-recon base in the Sixties. (I won't tell which is me in that goofy picture.) A good friend was an aerial photo technician so I saw some of the terrific-looking gear used in the Voodoo RF-101 and U2. When I saw the photo interpreters (PIs) at work I had the revelation that changed my view of the utility of very expensive optics for recon work - humans viewing stereographs through simple optical binoculars did the hard work. No machine at the time could do the kind of work experienced PIs did. Pursuing lp/mm remained an interest for some time until it was clear that it was a curiosity and a waste of time for me.

My friend's wife was a local school teacher and he got a picture of her through the window of her building from a Voodo test flight. If you were not clued into what you were looking at it was really obscure.

[choiliefan]

Groovy Jaguar Mk VII...

[AgNO3]

I bought this lens as a surrogate for any big, heavy lens.
It wasn't expensive, well, not as expensive as postage from the UK...

I'm building a big camera, and wanted to get an idea of the weight that I'd need to be able to hang on the front-
should I ever feel the need to hang a big number Petzval, or some other heavy antique there-

In the meantime, this one is usable, although I haven't used it beyond testing it a little-
I haven't built the camera yet, but I have attached it to the 8x10 (and 4x5) just to see what kind of pictures it makes.

Or rather, I've attached an 8x10 and a 4x5 to the lens and made some pictures-
I'm sure a similar setup could easily be made for any camera and lens combination,
provided the rear element is about the same size as the front bellows opening.

This one has a Packard mounted in the rear, quite a large one-
I've also tested it on a DSLR, for convenience-

Dan, that's a nice piece of research, nicely presented-
I'm not sure if it's quite fair to compare a long lens used on medium format to a long lens on a format that can better be presented as a contact print. True, they are ridiculous things, but ridiculous exists on a sliding scale, and for a lot of people, ridiculous would have been reached way before 4x5.
The idea that any of these things are suitable for general use might be an idea challenged by anyone not already a patient here...

Would I recommend it? Probably not, not unless your curiosity couldn't be sated any other way- but that's your call-


Although, as I mentioned, I haven't done much with it, there are some pictures of it and from it here-


http://www.flickr.com/photos/joseph-...7625401037924/

Hi there,

very old post, but I´m pretty curious how you are doing with this lens. Your pics on flickr are very nice and the mount, you´ve built for the lens, looks very like this moster of glass was intended to be used this way. Great work.

I´ve tumbled into this thread here by googling further info about my recently purchased and activated 24" & 36" aerial lenses, both f6.3, made by Wray, London. I was fortunate to purchase both lenses in a lot, including the sturdy aluminum mount to fit them into my wet plate project.

I´m not an educated photographer, just became interested in wet plate during C19 lock down and pretty soon developed the idea of larger formats, than the 4"x5", I´m using for tintypes. I´m still learning the whole process on 12"x16" (actually EU sized 30x40cm) glass plates, exposing, developing and fixing them with my mobile dark room and camera (I´ve installed everything in the back of an old S2a 109 Land Rover, a true 4x4 field camera).

So here are my very first plates shot with this camera and both lenses:

I´ve started using the 36" just for a shot of the opposite building out of the camera´s tin shed on a gray, rainy January evening, stopped a bit down at f16 to fight the razor sharp field of depth.


A few days ago, I managed to put the 24" lens into use "in the field". Another leaf sprung Land Rover and a pristine VW T2 fire engine stood still for me.


As I already mentioned, I´m still learning the process and deeply apologize to intrude this fine circle of experts with my art brut. Spot less plates are still a rare event. Scanning or photographing these reflecting glass plates is a challenge; showing the crisp sharpness on downsized forum compatible jpgs, too.

Anyway, the image circle of these lenses is huge and the sweet spot big enough for lots of movement of the 12"x16" plate.

The first image shot with the 36" lens had a ca 30° vertical plate swing to catch the hose and glass brick window in the back, as well as the 2m closer elevator door. The "no use in case of fire"-sticker on it is as sharp as the window and hose on the left.

The second image, shot with the 24", the lens was also stopped down to f16, but couldn´t catch the windscreen and the 1m closer bumper, but the VW´s nose inbetween. No swing or tilt in this case.

So long