Conley Series III 10 inch - Petzval (I think???)

[Kimberly Anderson]

So I got the Century 7 all rigged up this morning and shot some test shots with the Conley 10 inch (f 3.8).

When I disassembled and cleaned it up I thought I was seeing the Petzval construction everyone has talked about. But, when I focused on the GG I didn't see any of the swirly-magic that we have seen from these. In fact, it looked pretty standard.

I shot some 8x10 with it, some TMY and some HDPP (Harmon Direct Positive Paper). I will process the HDPP today and the TMY tomorrow.

I guess I was expecting to see some sort of swirl somewhere, but honestly I am not seeing any.

Thoughts?

I will post a pic after I process.

[Louis Pacilla]

How close where you focusing? Was it like portrait distance? you'll get some swill if you focus at infinity on 8x10 w/ a 10 Petzal.

I would ask why you want this. But it may be fruitless .

[Kimberly Anderson]

Portrait-ish distance. Negs look good, paper looks good. None of that swirly goodness though. I'm a bit surprised.

This lens does have a diffusion control though, but the knob is broken off. Since the background looks pretty standard I am guessing that the diffusion must be set on 0. I'm going to get that fixed and do some more playing/testing.

[Mark Sawyer]

The lens is almost certainly a re-branded Wollensak Vitax, which is a Petzval design. It will swirl, but only under the right conditions. A busy background with lost of bright specular highlights will show it best. Try shooting a few full-body portraits (so you don't get too large an image circle by focusing close; swirl happens at the outer edges of the image circle) under trees with the sky showing through the leaves, and of course, work with the aperture wide open.

[Kimberly Anderson]

Will do!

[goamules]

It's really interesting when someone wants swirls, which are an aberration which was to be avoided at all costs in the old days. These portrait lenses were NOT designed to have coma and a distracting, spinning kaleidoscopic background. It's something that can be coaxed out some lens designs, especially petzvals. But if every time you looked at the ground glass through a pezval you had severe aberrations, Joseph Petzval would have called the design and failure and gone back to the drawing board. The swirl was acknowledged as the only downside for a very fast, very sharp lens design, and it was recommended to use only the center part of the coverage to avoid it.

I totally understand today's change. When every cell phone and point and shoot takes perfect, flat, error free shots, it's great fun to see how "bad" a shot we can make with the old lenses! And each photographer want's something different, so thankfully we have options with the old brass lenses.

The paradoxes are interesting. With 35mm, most like a smooth, unobtrusive bokeh. Contrarily, some LFers want bokeh swirls to be the focus of the picture.
35mm folks spend big bucks getting the sharpest lens they can for a TINY negative with low resolution. LFs spend big bucks for a very soft, simple lens for a giant negative with inherent high resolution.

[CCHarrison]

1910 Sears Catalogue

And yes I agree its a Wolly Vitax

Dan

[Emil Schildt]

Michael: when I want swirl I kind of think backwards:

First I choose a background (as Mark was describing).
Then I un-focus on this bit by bit, to the point of maximum swirl.

first then I make my model stand in front of the camera - and having she/he movind slowly back or foreward I then see, where the sharpness is for the portrait.

then take the picture...

If you do the normak thing, the swirl/no swirl will be a lucky shot....

Have fun - it is!

[Kimberly Anderson]

Gandolfi, that is an interesting way to approach this. Huh.....I am thinking about this quite differently now. I will play around with it this weekend. Today is booked with showing the large camera collection to a potential buy-it-all-at-once guy this morning. Then I'm cleaning out the chemicals from his darkroom and move it all to my house. My lens playing time is limited today. Tomorrow it's all mine!

[Kimberly Anderson]

I've stripped this lens down today and was amazed at how clean the glass ended up being. Truly amazing. I got the rear floating element sleeve to move very freely, cleaned up the rotating knob mechanism and have the shaft with the broken screw in it out to take to a machinist this week.

The floating element can move freely now, and I can slide that element in it's adjusting sleeve forward and backward just by tipping and shaking the lens. I have a question about this lens (and the Vitax that it truly is). At what position is the diffusion the greatest? towards the front of the lens or toward the rear. I am going to shoot some portraits tomorrow and try to figure out which way is which.

If anyone knows, that would give me a head start.

Thanks!