Ektar Suggestions

[John Conway]

I am about to search for an Ektar lens, 10, 12 or 14 inch , to use on my Calumet C1 camera. I'm seeking advise on what to look for when searching. Aside from the usual defects such as heavy cleaning marks, cloudiness, and separation, what should I avoid when looking for an Ektar? I see prices from four hundred to a thousand bucks and some of the lower priced lenses don't look bad. But the real pretty ones in the nice original wood boxes are attractive. I usually go for the clean stuff. I'm also curious about the portrait Ektar compared to the commercial.( I think keh has a 305).

[Otto Seaman]

It's more often the shutters that are problems rather than the lenses. The large ACMEs are always slow and can be expensive.

[Mark Sawyer]

The Kodak Portrait Lens is a completely different lens than the Commercial Ektar. The KPL is a simple meniscus doublet used for soft focus work, where the CE is a sharp Tessar. The single coatings on these are rather soft and easily damaged, but that has little effect on the results.

[Bernice Loui]

Three basic types of Kodak Ektar lenses for 4x5 and larger sheet film.

f6.3 Commercial Ektar, typically found in 8 1/2", 10", 12" and 14" focal lengths. Earliest examples were Eastman Anastigmat, pre-WW-II not coated, Coating ( Magnesium fluoride coated, 'Lumenized' )began some time post WW-II initially internally between lens elements and eventually externally. They are quite consistent in image quality, and even more so for post WW-II production unless something bad has happened to the specific lens.

There was also a f 4.5 Ektar in 152mm, 7 1/2" and 12", maybe others. These were basically the same as a Commercial Ektar except for the larger aperture.

Portrait Ektar, soft focus in 12" and 16" f4.8. The 12" in barrel had a slightly larger aperture# than in shutter.

Pretty and clean alone should not be the deciding factor in Ektar ownership as many of these have cleaning marks due to the soft coating/glass and abusive cleaning. Keep in mind the majority of these Ektars were used hard daily to produce many, many images. The Ilex shutters used on more than a few Kodak Ektars were not standard threaded or size shutters, they were made for Kodak, but the internals are pretty much the same as production Ilex shutters.

Due to the problems of shutter accuracy and reliability, I prefer them in barrel and use them with a Sinar shutter. They are can be found re-mounted in copal and other modern shutters.


Bernice

[E. von Hoegh]

There's also the 203mm f:7.7 Ektar, a Dialyt type which works very well over a wide range of reproduction ratios. Covers 5x7 with movements, single coated.

A small light sharp little gem.

[Simon Benton]

There are also the wide field Ektars. I am not sure of the complete range but I have owned the 100mm and 135mm and still have the 250mm in an Ilex 5. Wonderful lens for 8X10.

[Mark Sampson]

'Ektar' does not indicate a specific lens design, but signifies Kodak's best. Which was pretty good. There are details on the front page of this site, and also see http://www.bnphoto.org/bnphoto/KodakTech3.htm for a look at the many Ektar lenses. I think a 10" CE will have minimal coverage on 8x10, though.

[Mark Woods]

Hello John, I have a 12" f/6.3 with a very small scratch near the edge of the front element. It has the bubbles in the glass typical of these lenses. The shutter seems to work quite well, but I haven't timed it. I've had it for years and never have used it since I have other lenses that work quite nicely for me in the same focal length. I'd love to sell to someone who would give it a good home.

[John Kasaian]

I have two Ektars in my 8x10 kit---the 14" Commercial Ektar and the 10" 250mm Wide Field Ektar. Aside from the usual defects you've already mentioned, I'd be concerned about the condition of the shutter of course. And if the lenses you're looking at come with their slip on filter adopters that would be worth a higher price as most do not and the large slip on adopters are hard to find. Mine didn't so I use the Lee 4"x4" gel snap system for Lee polyester filters, which I put in Calumet cardboard holders to help longevity. Also I find that the Ilex No. 5 Universal shutters require a longer than usual throw cable release to fire and I've had very good luck using Gepe Pro cable releases on my Ilex No. 5 Universals.
In cost, both my 8x10 Ektars were on the cheaper side of the price spread, and both perform very, very well indeed :D

[John Conway]

I'm listening. My choice will be between a 12" and 14" commercial. I'm glad the filter issue was mentioned. I've managed to put together a wonderful collection of Harrison glass filters in diffusion and black dot sets of five that have given me wonderful results on 4X5. I'll just have to figure out how to mount my Lindahl bellow shade onto an Ektar lens. Lindahl must have made an adapter for the Ektar. Then there is the issue of a lens board for the C1. I see wood boards for sale everywhere but I want metal. Maybe Calumet has new metal boards.

[Otto Seaman]

A 72mm filter or shade will usually thread mount ~ roughly ~ onto a 14" Commercial Ektar.

[John Conway]

A 72mm filter or shade will usually thread mount ~ roughly ~ onto a 14" Commercial Ektar.

I have a 72mm (or it may be a 67mm) set up for the Lindahl that I use on my 250 6.3 Fuji. When you say "roughly" what do you mean. If the Ektar has a 72mm thread it will make me happy.

[Peter York]

I absolutely love my 12" commercial, but the shutter renders it unuseable these days. Definitely check the shutter condition, and most likely, budget for a CLA.

[Otto Seaman]

I have a 72mm (or it may be a 67mm) set up for the Lindahl that I use on my 250 6.3 Fuji. When you say "roughly" what do you mean. If the Ektar has a 72mm thread it will make me happy.

It's not threaded for 72mm but you can still get it on for a turn.

[Tin Can]

Check Calumet for new C1 lens boards. Try Chicago. They still had them within the last 3 months.

I also use the Chicago and Michigan eBay guys for cheap wood C1 adapter boards. PDG.




I'm listening. My choice will be between a 12" and 14" commercial. I'm glad the filter issue was mentioned. I've managed to put together a wonderful collection of Harrison glass filters in diffusion and black dot sets of five that have given me wonderful results on 4X5. I'll just have to figure out how to mount my Lindahl bellow shade onto an Ektar lens. Lindahl must have made an adapter for the Ektar. Then there is the issue of a lens board for the C1. I see wood boards for sale everywhere but I want metal. Maybe Calumet has new metal boards.

[Don Dudenbostel]

I had gotten pretty much out of LF film a year ago and sold most of my 8x10 glass. I decided I wanted to get back in and bought a 5x7 and 8x10 Deardorff. I was faced with only a 240 G Claron that would cover it and decided to go for less expensive and more vintage glass. I searched and finally settled on a near mint 12" Connercial that had perfect glass and a fresh CLA. It even has the original metal cap. I got it for $400 so its possible to find clean ones at a good price.

I've shot LF for nearly fifty years and used one or more ektars continuously over that time along with more modern glass. I've had two 12" commercial, two 203 f7.7 Ektars and still have one, a 250 wfEktar for forty years and used a 135 AF and was the only one I didn't care for. IMO they're all fine. The negative IMO is the #5 shutter in the 14 & 10" Wf. Parts are hard to come by and they are very large and bulky.

I used my 10" wf since 1972 and sold it a few years ago and replaced it with a very nice Fuji 250 f6.7. Wish I had done this years ago. The Fuji was very small relative to the Ektar and just as fine if not better with a huge image circle too. Also it was in a modern copal 1 shutter vs the massive #5 Ilex.

[Don Dudenbostel]

Keep in mind the commercial Ektar is just a Tessar as are Xenar, Many Ilex lenses, Congo and many others. Kodak did a nice job making them but there's no magic in them vs other makers Tessars. Tessar lenses are simple and very good no matter the maker.

[Wayne Lambert]

A 72mm screws in perfectly on my 14" CE.

Wayne

[Bernice Loui]

In the pile:

Xenar, Commercial Ektar, APO Tessar, Paragon and ... They may all be tessar designs, still the resulting images are not the same and each have their distinct personalities..

Over the years of tinkering with lenses, there were more than a few poor performing lenses both vintage and new.

The tessar design continues to be looked down upon by more than a few..


Bernice


Keep in mind the commercial Ektar is just a Tessar as are Xenar, Many Ilex lenses, Congo and many others. Kodak did a nice job making them but there's no magic in them vs other makers Tessars. Tessar lenses are simple and very good no matter the maker.

[ridax]

Xenar, Commercial Ektar, APO Tessar, Paragon and ... They may all be tessar designs, still the resulting images are not the same and each have their distinct personalities... there were more than a few poor performing lenses both vintage and new. The tessar design continues to be looked down upon by more than a few.

And I'd add that besides the noticeable difference between the individual tessar incarnations, there is a significant family difference between the f/6.3 and slower tessars - and the f/4.5 and faster ones. The f/6.3's (and f/9's) have the astigmatism almost perfectly corrected (though they may still have some field curvature), and so they tend to be pretty sharp - on the level the best plasmats are. A f/4.5 tessar just can't be made like that. Those have their radial and tangential 'planes' of actual focus curved in the opposite directions resulting in a lot of residual astigmatism (which is zero only in the very center and in just one field point where the radial and the tangential focus 'planes' intersect). This is the very reason the fast tessars are never as sharp as the best modern glasses. The faster the tessar and the more angle it is intended to cover, the greater the astigmatism and the poorer the tessar's sharpness. (Yes there is also the coma issue as well as the others but most of those are eliminated or greatly reduced with stopping down, and the astigmatism is not.) The slow tessars are usually free from the astigmatism problem.

That said, I personally have never seen a f/6.3 or a slower tessar as beautiful in its out of focus rendition as the best of the faster ones (to say nothing of the Dagor) - at least if you don't move the tessar's front element (and as the out of focus rendition gets better with such displacement, the sharpness degrades quite a bit). I guess calculating a slow 'highly anastigmatic' tessar with a decent amount of residual spherical aberration for the pictorial beauty of the image is entirely possible but I'm afraid no lens maker ever bothered to produce a tessar like that. :(

[Bernice Loui]

Did not know this about the smaller aperture tessars. Still the Commercial Ektar has a very nice out of focus rendition along with smooth tonal rendition and neutral color rendition.

Of the group, my favorites for out of focus rendition at max or near max aperture:


f3.5 Heliar.

f4.5 Ektar

f4.5 Xenar.


It seems lens designers of the past understood the importance of out of focus rendition and did not center their design on everything sharp at small aperture (~f22), hard-high contrast, hard edge sharp, over sized image circle even if light fall off might become a problem. They appeared to have a far more balanced approach to LF lens design than their later LF lens designers (I believe is marketing driven).

One last thing I'll add on Ektars, they were very much hand made individually along with very good quality control gave them an extra edge in performance.



Bernice





That said, I personally have never seen a f/6.3 or a slower tessar as beautiful in its out of focus rendition as the best of the faster ones (to say nothing of the Dagor) - at least if you don't move the tessar's front element (and as the out of focus rendition gets better with such displacement, the sharpness degrades quite a bit). I guess calculating a slow 'highly anastigmatic' tessar with a decent amount of residual spherical aberration for the pictorial beauty of the image is entirely possible but I'm afraid no lens maker ever bothered to produce a tessar like that. :(

[ridax]

Of the group, my favorites for out of focus rendition at max or near max aperture: f/3.5 Heliar; f/4.5 Ektar; f/4.5 Xenar.

Speaking on the out of focus rendition at max. apertures we really should specify what out of focus zones we are talking about - the background or the foreground. Almost every lens in the world renders the background more or less better then the foreground (though unfortunately there are a lot of lenses that work equally bad in both) if well stopped down, but wide open, different lenses are really different. There are tessars that make better foreground and worse background wide open, and have to be stopped down at least 1 to 1.5 stops to get their best background (and the worst foreground) blur; the f/3.5 and f/4.5 Xenars, the 101mm and 135mm and some other versions of f/4.5 Raptars, and many Ektars, Paragons, Ysarons and Zeiss Tessars are among those. In fact, the vast majority of the tessar and triplet type lenses are like that - thanks to the spherical aberration being negative in the mid- and positive in the outer zones of the lens pupil. With this type of the residual SA, the more the shear amount of the SA left in the lens, the more beautiful the background is stopped down 1 to 1.5 stops, and the worst it is wide open. And for the foreground blur, the opposite is true. So judging such a lens by its background blur wide open should actually mean taking the worst (actually, a pretty technical piece of glass without much pictorial qualities nor 'personality') for the best one.

But there are also tessars with no positive SA at all, and those make nice background and bad foreground blur already wide open; examples of those are 74mm and 127mm f/4.5 Raptars, the old 110mm f/4.5 Zeiss Tessar and some others.

[Peter Yeti]

I'm a bit puzzled by your observations. I only have one 4.5/18cm Zeiss Tessar from around 1923 and it's incredibly sharp at f18. There is not a hint of residual spherical abberation as far as I have seen. Actually, my best modern plasmats (Sinaron S's) have to work very hard to compete regarding sharpness and resolution. What's really poor about this Tessar is the OOF rendition regardless of before or behind focus plane. I always thought that's a well known issue with all Tessars. Are Ektars and Xenars really different (and better) in this respect? Sometimes, when the OOF area has basically no structure or contrast, the Tessar works fine. Otherwise, it often gets unpleasant. By contrast, my Goerz Dagors, my Meyer Helioplan, my Busch Rapid Aplanat always produce nice OOF results.

[ridax]

I'm a bit puzzled by your observations. I only have one 4.5/18cm Zeiss Tessar from around 1923 and it's incredibly sharp at f18. There is not a hint of residual spherical abberation as far as I have seen. Actually, my best modern plasmats (Sinaron S's) have to work very hard to compete regarding sharpness and resolution. What's really poor about this Tessar is the OOF rendition regardless of before or behind focus plane. I always thought that's a well known issue with all Tessars. Are Ektars and Xenars really different (and better) in this respect? Sometimes, when the OOF area has basically no structure or contrast, the Tessar works fine. Otherwise, it often gets unpleasant. By contrast, my Goerz Dagors, my Meyer Helioplan, my Busch Rapid Aplanat always produce nice OOF results.

I don't have the 4.5/18cm Zeiss Tessar at hand now so I can't comment on this particular lens. Generally, individual lenses in one and the same line (series, according to the early terminology) may differ in their out of focus rendition. Most of the old f/4.5 Zeiss Tessars (and in fact, many other tessar type lenses, too) don't have their positive spherical aberration strong enough to make the wide-open foreground blur really good but still strong enough to make the background bad. Those are better used at f/7 or at least f/6.3; at these apertures and approximately up to f/16 or so they have enough of negative SA and thus are good for blurring the background. But surprisingly my uncoated 4,5/8cm Zeiss Tessar rendered the blurred background unpleasant at all of its apertures (though its foreground blur was good wide open). And as I mentioned above, the 4,5/11cm Zeiss Tessar makes the background nice already at f/4.5.

Sample to sample variations may also matter here, though even the oldest Zeiss lenses are not too prone to those. Industars usually aren't either. The post-WWII German lenses are even better in their consistency, as are the Kodak and Wollensak ones. But not all the lens makers are/were that reliable. I bought six identically labeled 4.5/190 Ilex Paragons some day, and no two of them were really identical. The actual focal lengths ranged from 194 mm to 210 mm. The individual lens elements were also very different even in the lenses that as a whole were the most similar to each other. Sharpness wise, I was able to name only 2 of the 6 good enough for my needs, and those two were also quite different (in fact, those surprisingly were the very shortest and the very longest focal length ones). And as for the out of focus rendition, both were fine for the background blur stopped down (at least to f/8 for one lens and to f/5.6 for the other) but the longer one also made nice foreground blur wide open, and the shorter one did not. Those Paragons had no serial numbers on the barrels so they might be of some inferior 'budget' batch that wasn't really representative of the normal quality control with this manufacturer but still I don't think I'd ever buy another Ilex lens.

It's rather hard and risky to make generalizations on the topics like this but still I don't think the f/4.5 Schneiders are very different from the contemporary Zeiss Tessars. As for the Kodak lenses, a lot of them have close to nothing in common to each other despite the identical names used. But if still forced to make a general statement on those, I'd rather say most Ektars tend to be sharper but less beautiful in their out of focus rendition then the other tessar type specimens existing in the world.

At f/18 or f/22 and at smaller apertures, tessar type lenses have virtually no spherical aberration left, and so they no longer produce pleasant background blur. Stopped down that much, they may be said to make both the background and the foreground blur bad or 'neutral' depending on how severe a judge you are and what lenses you compare them to. And if you are used to a Dagor you'd probably be a judge as severe as one can ever get. As I've mentioned in another thread (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?63200-A-discovery-Dagor-type-G-Claron-s-as-the-ultimate-Casket-Set&p=1025646&viewfull=1#post1025646), f/6.8 (f/7.7 if longer) Dagors still have some negative SA left even at f/32 and f/45. That makes the Dagors unbeaten in their background blur quality at all apertures up to f/10 (but go faster, and the positive SA comes into play ruining the background... but still not improving the foreground enough. So I'd never shoot a f/6.8 Dagor at apertures wider then f/10). Tessars have a much much narrower range of f-stops usable for the better background blur and also fail to make the distant highly defocused background as good as the near one (which is an easy task for Dagors) but these usable tessars' f-stops are faster f-stops so for me, tessars are the way to go with smaller formats where wider apertures are used - and alas for the very long focal lengths in LF, too, as tessars (and celors, which usually have their SA similar to those of the tessars) are not as hard to find and are way more affordable then Dagors (and Protars, some of which are as good out of focus as the f/6.8 and f/7.7 Dagors).

As for the residual astigmatism, it is not influenced by the aperture used but as the depth of field and the depth of focus increase with stopping down, astigmatism also becomes less visible in the actual picture. And when the depth of focus is greater then the astigmatic difference, astigmatism is invisible at all - unless you enlarge the picture greatly enough to reduce the DoF and see the sharpness defects again...

Also, astigmatism does not actually blur the lines that are close to radial or tangential (though it really spoils the ones going at an angle to both of the above); astigmatism just makes the radial lines sharp at one distance from the lens and the tangential ones at another. With small DoF, the human eye often does not object to the phenomena, at least for some of the subjects. The eye just catches the sharp lines here and there and is happy to ignore the unsharp ones (if only those are not defocused in a particularly nasty way). That's why those fast non-anastigmatic lenses of the past still make surprisingly beautiful pictures in portraiture and still life and etc. But then landscapes and especially architecture and certain other subjects are quite another matter.

[Bernice Loui]

ridax, thanks for sharing this insight about Tessars and such. It also explains to a large degree why my preferences for specific LF optics and have avoided many.

There must have been technical reasons why behind the differences in lenses, but this is the first time it was explained this way to me.


Thank you..

Bernice

[Peter Yeti]

I agree, this is very educational, indeed. I never researched the reasons why different lenses render OOF so differently. If I understood this right, you say that the balance between positive and negative residual astigmatism is responsible for this effect. I'm still a little puzzled about this and need to think a bit more about it.

Anyway, from experience I tend to stay away from my Zeiss Tessar when OOF becomes important. That seems along the line what I've read from several others using old Zeiss Tessars. But I love to use this lens for landscape where basically everything is in focus. Fortunately, I have a bunch of other options to choose from when OOF is an integral part of the image concept. My Dagors are prime choice as is the Meyer Helioplan (it's like a Celor). But even my modern plasmats like Sinarons, Sironars, and Symmars often produce nicer OOF than this particular Tessar. I have to mention, though, that I hardly ever shoot wide open. And when I do, the Dargors still take the cake. Anyway, all these lenses have their personal strengths and weaknesses and they can be utilized to great advantage.

But while we're at it: What's the deal with the old Heliars? I read that it's special character is due to residual spherical aberration. I do see a slight similarity with the Dagors, though you say it should be astigmatism with the Dagors. Unfortunately, I cannot compare them myself because I don't have a Heliar. Sorry for the off-topic.

[ridax]

Bernice, thanks a lot for your kind words. I really believe nothing is more practical then a decent theory, and knowing a couple of general principles makes memorizing an enormous number of facts unnecessary... Though practice is unavoidable of course - and really pleasant, too. :)


Peter, it's spherical aberration that I was talking about concerning the out of focus rendition, not astigmatism. (I've adopted the SA abbreviation for the spherical aberration as I've seen this used by other people on this forum. Looks like it's not a good idea to be a lazy typist and use abbreviations instead of the full words!)

As for astigmatism, it mostly affects sharpness - especially of the lines that are neither radial nor tangential. Astigmatism is generally not good for out of focus rendition but its influence on this is small enough to be well masked by the spherical aberration. (In fact, other aberrations are often pretty well masked by the spherical one, at least at wider apertures when the spherical aberration is prominent. Thus, the old Zeiss 2.8/180 Olympia Sonnar, the f/5.6 Convertible Symmars and a lot of other non-apochromatic but wisely constructed fast lenses have certain color fringes (though one has to enlarge the image quite a bit to see those) in the picture taken with the lens stopped down, but those fringes are almost impossible to find in a wide-open-lens image: the chromatic aberration just gets lost under the more powerful spherical and spherochromatic aberrations properly configured by the lens designers.)

I do not have an original Voightlaender Heliar either. I've tried some of them and liked them but I didn't like their prices. My reasoning was, Heliars would not beat my Dagors stopped down, and I want faster lenses for my small format cameras only, and I don't want to spend a lot on those. Heaving 6 glass to air surfaces, Heliars are not as flare resistant as Dagors if uncoated, and coated ones are not cheap at all. Besides, I think the best of tessars and celors are good enough for me when I really have to use something faster then a Dagor. Tessar and celor type lenses are plenty and often cost next to nothing.

Universal Heliars are usually valued higher then the other ones but they are not the only lenses featuring moveable elements; so do longer focus tessar type Velostigmats and some other lenses. Besides, there is enough of very affordable tessar and celor type glass on the market that were not intended for changing their elements' positions but those still can be moved pretty easily (some of my own first-hand data on the really cheap longer focus process lenses like that: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?104094-Docter-Optic-Tessar-Apo-Germinar-MTF-curves&p=1035389&viewfull=1#post1035389).

Speaking of the other makers' heliar type lenses, I must say the Heliar formula does not automatically mean a pictorially good lens at all. Enlarging Ektars of the heliar type are just high quality enlarging lenses hardly usable as taking ones when one wants a picture not only sharp but also visually pleasant. And a number of Mamiya heliar-type taking lenses are far from being great out of focus blur makers either.

[russyoung]

Ridax, thank you very much for your detailed and clear text. I wish you had been around when I was writing my dissertation (2004-2007) - was unable to find anyone at an academic institution in Britain who could answer my optical questions, mostly regarding SA and meniscus lenses. Virtually every PhD I wrote/spoke to was only expert in monochromatic light - lasers - and their applications which had little in common with pictorial photography.

With relatively few words, you have illuminated and clarified much.

Russ Young

[Bernice Loui]

Knowledge well shared deserves a good word of thanks as it can help many along this same journey.

It seem not so long ago when Heliars were common and not expensive at all. During this hey-day, most Heliars in barrel can be had for well under $100 easy. So, that was a chance to try and burn film. While they have smooth OOF rendering at full aperture and stopped down a bit, the majority of them were not coated and were prone to flare. This caused enough contrast reduction for me to pass on so many of them for images made on color film. The one exception was a 210mm f3.5 which appears to be coated and put back together by Burke & James (aka: lens bank). This is the only Heliar that remains in the pile today.

Since those days, I'm simply shocked at the current market price of Heliars, specially the Universal Heliar.



Bernice



Bernice, thanks a lot for your kind words. I really believe nothing is more practical then a decent theory, and knowing a couple of general principles makes memorizing an enormous number of facts unnecessary... Though practice is unavoidable of course - and really pleasant, too. :)

Universal Heliars are usually valued higher then the other ones but they are not the only lenses featuring moveable elements; so do longer focus tessar type Velostigmats and some other lenses. Besides, there is enough of very affordable tessar and celor type glass on the market that were not intended for changing their elements' positions but those still can be moved pretty easily (some of my own first-hand data on the really cheap longer focus process lenses like that: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?104094-Docter-Optic-Tessar-Apo-Germinar-MTF-curves&p=1035389&viewfull=1#post1035389).

Speaking of the other makers' heliar type lenses, I must say the Heliar formula does not automatically mean a pictorially good lens at all. Enlarging Ektars of the heliar type are just high quality enlarging lenses hardly usable as taking ones when one wants a picture not only sharp but also visually pleasant. And a number of Mamiya heliar-type taking lenses are far from being great out of focus blur makers either.