Verito and Reinhold Wollaston Shootout

[jp]

JohnnyPelvis is missing out in this battle of the soft lens commerce conspiracy. Galli has sold a verito or two and is amassing a fortune, outside of the sin city desert playground of the mob, from selling at least a Struss a week as fast as his government surplus lab will turn out mexican hat glass from magnifying glass, Reinhold meanwhile has a deal with me. I get hookers and cocaine every time I sell ten wollaston meniscii, and life is good. This IT job of mine is just a front as I'm really just running around with cameras and Zumba women in Vacationland, pushing sewer pipe lenses on doctors and telecom lawyers and profiting from the free use of forums like LFF and APUG, which isn't quite free; everything has a price. Galli is filling garages with model A's, Reinhold wants another steel building full of antique BMW motorcycles, and I'm not saying where my money may or may not be going.

Be warned; replicating this may not produce the same results, which could be massively different if you are off by 1/3 stop of aperture or the light is a little more harsh or soft. It's all a learning experience.

I was at the beach the other day, waiting for a cocaine bail to float in, and had two lenses on me and was looking for some surprise and learning from the lenses.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3781/12602216445_8b3c77b109_z.jpg

First up is the 190mm wollaston meniscus at f6.3. The F6.3 and F6.6 stops were provided to me gratis by Reinhold.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2882/12666110593_74c2310635_c.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13759696@N02/12666110593/in/photostream/

Then the 8.75" verito at F4.5 (midway between f4 and 5.6).

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2894/12666450064_98000d5fd3_c.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13759696@N02/12666450064/in/photostream/

Here's what I see. Lots of white powder on the rocks, with some missing. The Wollaston seems to have a fatter depth of field. It was shot at a slightly smaller aperture, but it seems like a pretty fat depth of field. I choose aperture on soft lenses for diffusion first and depth of field is not a major consideration. Go up to 8x10 if you want zero depth of field AND soft. I tried to make the diffusion about the same with these photos.

Evidenced by the shadow and or mossy area of the rock in the upper left, the verito seems to slightly blob masses of light and dark more. It could be the result of slightly thinner DOF. If you're into abstraction, this is good. If you're into notan, this is good. How's the notan on my images here?

Both handled the foreground about equally.

The rock in the mid-focus of the image seems a little fuzzier on the verito, and a little chalkier on the Wollaston. Maybe I should start using descriptive terms like used by beer/coffee/wine snobs? It starts off chocolatey and ends with fruity undertones with a cotton candy finish. Not very hoppy.

Which should you buy? It's sort of like which handgun to buy when they are all expensive and look alike. It's good to have both. More is betterer. I don't know which image is better.

[Ari]

Jason,
Did someone hack your account, or did that cocaine actually arrive?

Great lead-up, but does this mean if we want a Verito-like look at rock-bottom prices, we need look no further than Reinhold's glass?

Will Jim Galli no longer light his Cohibas with $100 bills due to a fall-off in lens sales?

:)

[jp]

Ari, people will want expensive lenses, just like expensive cigars and steaks. It's all cheap stuff compared to new glass from Zeiss/Nikon/Canon. There was a crazy thread that was shut down by the mods on APUG where antique lens traders were villified.
In theory, one could make money on veritos by buying low, using them, and selling high, just like the housing market a few years ago. You can't really resell a used Reinhold lens for big bucks as it's not historical or out of production. In practice, you get better photos by getting a lens and using it for a few years rather than a few weeks.

[Ari]

In practice, you get better photos by getting a lens and using it for a few years rather than a few weeks.

Point well made, my tongue-in-cheek reply notwithstanding.

I'm for anybody who knows how to turn something almost unwanted into a viable commerce, be it lenses or houses or pizzas.

[Lachlan 717]

190mm @ f6.3 versus 222mm @ f4.5. Seems like comparing a Shiraz to a Cab - same colour liquid, but quite different beasts.

I don't understand the handgun simile, but, that being said, I agree: I don't know which image is better. I'd like to see more comparison images (i.e. additional subjects), as well as a colour image of the subject taken through a "normal" lens so as to understand what's being shot.

Regardless, it's just good knowing that knucklehead JohnnyElvis CAN'T contribute to this thread!!

[Adamphotoman]

I like the second image but not because it was made with the Verito. More because the foreground is sharper and the fall off in the background is soft. The first image is sharper in the mid to background and the fore ground is soft.

They were shot differently so the comparison is not quite fair...

[Jim Galli]

Fun to look at! Fun to read! I like the Verito one better. It's woolier. And since Johnny the elf isn't here, I'll mix spel a fuw woords un he behalv?

Time has passed. I've got a gigantic pile of Struss lenses, but I have to let them trickle out one at a time so I can keep the prices inflated and the mystique piqued.

But the bigger story is . . . . how did I get all this stuff that I'm robbing everybody blind with?? Well, here is the tale. Truth, of course, is always stranger than fiction;


The True Story of the Nevada Lens Mine

Think about it? How do SO many ecclectic antique lenses end up in
Tonopah Nevada? It's like the Bermuda Triangle of old photo lenses.

We've had some fun throwing around the Nevada Lens
Mine myth but the truth is even stranger.

I've decided to come clean because no one will believe me anyways.
But before I start, think about it. How do so many ecclectic antique
lenses end up in the middle of nowhere? I think I'm up to about 250.

As some of you know, I work in the Nevada desert at a Gov't installation.
Over time I began a rapport with what we'll call for lack of a better term,
the little green men. Turns out they're friendly, and they're bored.
So here's the thing...

They're pretty well locked up...unless...someone with the right
combinations turns them loose. We talked about it quite a while
over cribbage and bad coffee until Floyd came up with an
interesting idea. Time travel. Yep, that's right, time travel. The
folks in Los Angeles with their huge long lenses get all worked into a
lather if they go out for a joy ride in the present, but what if........
hmmm......just might work. What if they slipped through a crack,
went out on a little joy ride, and came right back in through the same crack.
No one would be the wiser if we were careful right?

I was holding a 24 point hand of 4's 5's and 6's and feeling pretty smart so I
said, "OK, but it'll cost you". What? What did I require? Here's my plan
I said. Say you're in 1951 Baltimore. I want you to bring me back some cool
old forgotten large format lenses. Bingo! No problem said they.

So with one small slip, that's how we've done it. I type in a code, out they go
for as long as they like, in whatever year they like, and then they slip back in
before the boss gets done stinking up the crapper.

So what was the one slip? My fault totally. You know that little incident in
Roswell? Yep, my fault. I had heard about some 210mm Xenotar's and got a
little greedy. OOPS! Cost a bunch of your tax dollars to cover that one up.
Sorry 'bout that. So now we stick to relatively banal places. This group you're
looking at in the classifieds this weekend came from 1946 Cleveland. Some old
pro had just died and this stuff was long since old and out of use. The green guys
left all the stuff anyone would notice, and brought me back these.

So there you have the true and complete reason that so many antique lenses
find their way to Tonopah, Nevada! Happy shooting

[David A. Goldfarb]

For this shot, I think the meniscus looks better than the Verito at the selected apertures, but the Verito is pretty variable between wide open and f:8, and it might be more interesting with a little less diffusion, say around f:6 or 7. And then if you're in the diffuse-focus zone with a Verito, there is also some control you have by choosing the focus point.

My own experience with meniscus lenses is that they don't offer as much control, but I haven't tried one as fast as Reinhold's.

[jp]

For this shot, I think the meniscus looks better than the Verito at the selected apertures, but the Verito is pretty variable between wide open and f:8, and it might be more interesting with a little less diffusion, say around f:6 or 7. And then if you're in the diffuse-focus zone with a Verito, there is also some control you have by choosing the focus point.

My own experience with meniscus lenses is that they don't offer as much control, but I haven't tried one as fast as Reinhold's.

My particular verito, diffusion changes REAL fast and far between 4.5 and 6.3ish. True some soft lenses have a focus point that's not 1/3 foreground 2/3 background which is also a consideration (like the kodak 305)


190mm @ f6.3 versus 222mm @ f4.5. Seems like comparing a Shiraz to a Cab - same colour liquid, but quite different beasts.

I don't understand the handgun simile, but, that being said, I agree: I don't know which image is better. I'd like to see more comparison images (i.e. additional subjects), as well as a colour image of the subject taken through a "normal" lens so as to understand what's being shot.

Regardless, it's just good knowing that knucklehead JohnnyElvis CAN'T contribute to this thread!!

I'll get Jim to tell his green men to go back and get me something closer to 190mm.

The gun thing.. Lots of enthusiasts would fret over which to buy, or buy both, and then not use them much and not be skilled with them because that's where the results come from.

110879

[goamules]

Nice job, thanks. As another lens collector, scholar, and shooter who was dared to make a comparison, I have a few comments too. The sputtering, hair tearing perpetrator of the original dare made a lot of predictions based on emotion, jealousy, and personal attacks. I'll make my hypothesis based on my understanding of optics.

This test masks a lot of differences. I'd like to see a composition where comparisons between how they differ will be more apparent:

1. The Wollensak Verito is rectilinear, the "wollaston" is not. Shots straight on, with easy to see straight lines would show the difference better than white snow shot at an angle. Wide open, the wollaston will have distortions that the Verito does not.

2. The Verito is an achromat, the "wollaston" is not. Early soft focus lenses and some famous ones like the Struss and some Pinkhams were also made in an era when film worked mostly in one band of the light spectrum. Shots taken with orthochromatic film or wetplate would reveal a huge difference in your test.

3. Related to the above, the Verito softness comes from Spherical Aberrations. The wollaston from mostly Chromatic. Color fringing, in black and white or color, will be a significant difference in specular highlights. A shot of glassware, backlit foliage, or even a nice portrait will reveal significant differences. So would color photographs.

4. The focusing method of the Verito is "what you see is what you get" whereas single meniscus lenses have an actinic light factor. If you focus by eye, you are averaging all the chromatic aberrations, and seeing more softness, but early ortho film and wetplate showed less. If you focus based on your knowledge of this, will have more softness, on film, from a single meniscus than what they eye sees.

Those are just a few things I can think of at the moment before my morning coffee. But I'd love to see (like all of us) a comparison Portrait, with lighting in the classic soft focus style, to see the highlights, skin tone, and such. And a landscape with trees or buildings, where the rectilinear distortions of the wollaston would be more apparent.

By the way, I doubt anyone has shot a real Wollaston, they are too rare and had too many defects to be used for more than the first year of daguerreotype photography. But they did have a distinctive grind profile. I wonder if anyone who owns the modern made one can tell us if the profile matches the original? Is the manufacturer buying or grinding to this profile?

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5534/12676392125_b00a15c717_o.jpghttp://farm6.staticflickr.com/5502/12676256153_2a26a25e8c_m.jpg

[jp]

Garret thanks for your input. If I find myself in a portrait situation or landscape situation and remember someone might want to see both rather than just what I want, maybe I'll get a pair of photos.

This shows MAD distortion from the Kodak 305 portrait (on 8x10), using it as intended (5x7) would reduce distortion
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13759696@N02/11428259765/
Here are some building with the Wollaston. I haven't shot any brick walls to show distortion. That's not a great subject in my estimation.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13759696@N02/12626164455/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13759696@N02/12095389923/

Jim's explanation fills in many gaps in photo history. Artists have weird stuff happen to them, and this sort of explains it. It's probably why Alvin Langdon Coburn had 7 P&S lenses; they kept getting stolen, and he eventually got out of pictorialism. Clarence White had to move his school from NYC to Maine to CT as the green men were probably robbing them blind. Here is a student Gertrude sullen over the loss of her lenses:

http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2013/jan/images/the_heritage_of_motherhood.jpg

Another booboo might have been F Holland Day's studio burning down. That wasn't solved and could have been the green men after his stuff.

Yosemite was also targeted. The green men likely stole Ansel Adams soft focus lenses, as he did start out in pictorialism. He put a camera platform on his vehicle so he could get a quick getaway if the green men started hovering.

http://cloud.lomography.com/576/391/0d/98e66b1b00afde831cc631dabdfbe9c206f5ae.jpg

The idea that nothing more than 100 yards from the road is worth photographing likely came about from being robbed of lenses when you couldn't make a getaway. The cost is either losing your lens or the social cost of saying green men took it and you'll end up in the mental hospital like Van Gogh.

[William Whitaker]

You mean they stole van Gogh's ear, too??

[William Whitaker]

Depth of field for a soft focus lens is like tuning a banjo. It's there in theory, but seldom true in practice.

[goamules]

And I'm still trying to figure out the "roundness" that portrait lens manufacturers and reviewers always talked about....! Maybe soft focus was a way to "virtually remove" ears?

[Reinhold Schable]

Depth of field for a soft focus lens is like tuning a banjo. It's there in theory, but seldom true in practice.

Now thaaaat's funny.
(And quite true)
But the music's fascinating anyway...

Reinhold

[jp]

So there you have the true and complete reason that so many antique lenses
find their way to Tonopah, Nevada! Happy shooting


110929

[Jim Galli]

110929

Dammit! I told those guys to not let anyone take pictures of them!!

[Paul Ewins]

... But I'd love to see (like all of us) a comparison Portrait, with lighting in the classic soft focus style, to see the highlights, skin tone, and such....

What would you call the classic soft focus lighting? I've got a copy of Abel but from memory only one of those portraits was shot with a soft focus lens so that's only a starting point at best. I don't have a huge collection of LF soft focus lenses (a few Veritos, Fujinons and Imagons) but I've managed to get copies of most of the 35m and MF soft focus lenses with the intention of doing a comparison shoot-out one day. There's not much point doing that if I don't have a clue how to play to their strengths.

[Tim Meisburger]

Interesting Paul. I've searched for information on how to use soft focus lenses, but never found any. I don't mean the technical details, but rather how best to light a subject to emphasise or minimise softness. I should just look at more pictures with the aim of sussing it out. One commonality seems to be backlighting.

[goamules]

There are several books on "Hollywood" lighting, but I can't remember their names. Search on Hurrell, and others that sometimes did this style. Or the Pictorialist writings. It's a long journey to understanding, not a few quick answers.

Here is a different thread where we post examples. This link starts at what I call a good example. http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?107334-Soft-Focus-on-quot-SHORPY-quot-but-not-limited-post-some-excellent-examples&p=1068859&viewfull=1#post1068859

[jp]

The green men have been by bearing gifts.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7440/13095725444_b8a33a45d2_c.jpg

Now just waiting on some free time when the kids aren't cranky and will cooperate for some portraits.

pictured: black lensboard 210mm Trioplan, back row l-r: 7" heliar, 7" verito, 190mm wollaston meniscus, aero ektar. I've waited all weekend for the paint to dry on that lensboard and am all psyched to use it.

[Michael Clark]

I'll take the 7" Heliar and the red cement mixer.

Mike

[jp]

The cement mixer was my grandfathers and it's way more rugged than anything you'll buy or borrow today. I think I'll keep it.

Done a little photo shoot with the family and managed to test a few lenses while getting some nice photos of the kids. WARNING. I am not perfect. I screwed up my wollaston meniscus photo badly. Nothing technical; I've used it plenty and shouldn't have made the mistake. The chair got in focus and should have been bokeh instead of sharp. Maybe you can glean a little softness from the chair. Probably not. Must be the auto 51 point AF Cam 1900 3d autofocusing system on my Speed graphic. Guess I won't be getting kickbacks from Reinhold this week. I'll share a few photos then a video when youtube processes. I didn't film the actual shoot as it was a little chaotic and I had my hands full with the people and lenses.

Take this not as a complete test of the lenses, but as a contrast between soft and smooth lenses. Don't go get one because you like one of these. Don't change your mind based on this if you are waffling with indecision about which lens to get. Get something and use it a lot. If I changed the lighting contrast a tad or raised a light 6" or changed the lens half a stop, it'd be big changes in the results. You get the results you want by figuring out that complete combination via experience more than by lens choice (assuming you are choosing from among soft lenses compared, or choosing among smooth lenses compared)

camera was a 4x5 speed graphic pre-anniversary, 4x5 tmy2 film in pyrocat hd.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3675/13206708605_79175dbd3f_c.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13759696@N02/13206708605/sizes/c/in/photostream/
The holy grail of gear porn. Size matters. Aero Ektar 178/2.5. wide open. I call it a smooth lens. The chair has yummy bokeh. My daughter is not soft. I think this can do good stuff without looking cliche. I look forward to playing with it more.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3733/13206709045_4ba2d06125_c.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13759696@N02/13206709045/
7" Verito. A soft lens that you can't go wrong with. I think it's sized for an RB super D or something similar, but works fine on a speed graphic.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3757/13207030694_c9de374fc5_c.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13759696@N02/13207030694/
It's out of focus like Julia Margaret Cameron would do. It's not a matter of chemical versus visual focus. It's a simple mistake on my part. One sheet of film per lens doesn't allow room for mistakes. It's a good soft lens I consider a little chalkier than the verito. f6.6 stop used here on the 190mm wollaston meniscus.

[jp]

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3673/13206853693_24ca401000_c.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13759696@N02/13206853693/
Beat up old heliar. I'm pleased with it, but there's a lot of good competition for smooth lenses. I wouldn't call it soft. This is wide open.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2831/13206707325_33ed2621b4_c.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13759696@N02/13206707325/
And my standby smooth lens, the 210mm meyer trioplan (a triplet)

To test the smooth lenses, you'd need a bokehlicious background, sort of like in this portrait http://www.flickr.com/photos/13759696@N02/9907986695/in/photolist-g6x2fP-cdidjb-g4CgWV-cxLPwY-cxE7tJ-cVEYS5
but it's winter and we don't have that right now.

[jp]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntoUMoRP9o8

[Mark Lukes]

I've seen quite good photos. This is really nice. I've learned some tips and surely I will follow all of those. Thanks a lot! Could you give me some tips if taking indoor photos?

[TheToadMen]

You mean they stole van Gogh's ear, too??

No, just his lenses - again and again - before he even got started as a photographer. After learning the reason for it from Ansel Adams, he left photography and turned to painting.
And there you have it: a time paradox.
Did he became a painter because his lenses got stolen all the time? Or did they steal his lenses, because he didn't us it for being a painter?

About his ear, one night when he woke up and heared something in his new darkroom, he grabbed a knive and a burning candle to see what it was. He thought he could scare off a burglar, but when he saw the little green men he jumped and accidentely set his hear on fire with the candle. While trying to keep the candle straight, he used his other hand to put out his hair. Unfortunatelly, he did this while still holding the knife ... So he cut off his ear accidentely defending his lenses with a sharp knive against suddenly appearing and disappearing little green men. When he said so the next day, everyone thought van Gogh was insane. It's a sad story.
Lesson to be learned: don't try to fight off the little green men when you're still holding a knife close to your head. Better throw popcorn at them, salted that is, as Fox Talbot discovered. He didn't lose any lenses anymore after he started using salt in his photography.
He sold this secret to Oscar Barnack and you know how many old Leica cameras and lenses are still around...

Bert from Holland
Http://thetoadmen.blogspot.nl

BTW: just looking at the two OP images, I like the Reinhold lens best.

[alanbutler57]

Nice job, thanks. As another lens collector, scholar, and shooter who was dared to make a comparison, I have a few comments too. The sputtering, hair tearing perpetrator of the original dare made a lot of predictions based on emotion, jealousy, and personal attacks. I'll make my hypothesis based on my understanding of optics.

This test masks a lot of differences. I'd like to see a composition where comparisons between how they differ will be more apparent:

1. The Wollensak Verito is rectilinear, the "wollaston" is not. Shots straight on, with easy to see straight lines would show the difference better than white snow shot at an angle. Wide open, the wollaston will have distortions that the Verito does not.

2. The Verito is an achromat, the "wollaston" is not. Early soft focus lenses and some famous ones like the Struss and some Pinkhams were also made in an era when film worked mostly in one band of the light spectrum. Shots taken with orthochromatic film or wetplate would reveal a huge difference in your test.

3. Related to the above, the Verito softness comes from Spherical Aberrations. The wollaston from mostly Chromatic. Color fringing, in black and white or color, will be a significant difference in specular highlights. A shot of glassware, backlit foliage, or even a nice portrait will reveal significant differences. So would color photographs.

4. The focusing method of the Verito is "what you see is what you get" whereas single meniscus lenses have an actinic light factor. If you focus by eye, you are averaging all the chromatic aberrations, and seeing more softness, but early ortho film and wetplate showed less. If you focus based on your knowledge of this, will have more softness, on film, from a single meniscus than what they eye sees.

Those are just a few things I can think of at the moment before my morning coffee. But I'd love to see (like all of us) a comparison Portrait, with lighting in the classic soft focus style, to see the highlights, skin tone, and such. And a landscape with trees or buildings, where the rectilinear distortions of the wollaston would be more apparent.

By the way, I doubt anyone has shot a real Wollaston, they are too rare and had too many defects to be used for more than the first year of daguerreotype photography. But they did have a distinctive grind profile. I wonder if anyone who owns the modern made one can tell us if the profile matches the original? Is the manufacturer buying or grinding to this profile?

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5534/12676392125_b00a15c717_o.jpghttp://farm6.staticflickr.com/5502/12676256153_2a26a25e8c_m.jpg



I know this thread is fairly old, but I'd love someone to expand on item #4 above, am I correct to assume you would focus a specific color in the subject rather than a specific point with the meniscus?

[jp]

My take on item 4 is essentially:
a) different films are sensitive to color differently, which is also different from the eye. If part of the softness (not all of it) is due to chromatic aberration, then this difference in sensitivity will have a result in the final image.
b) I use normal film like tmy2 or fp4+ and focus normally. I do expect the softness and glow to differ slightly from what I see on the groundglass. Experience is the best teacher to know how this will translate to film. Meaning you must shoot a lot to know what aperture to use for which subjects to get what you want without having to "bracket" aperture choices. I don't shoot xray/ortho/wetplate with the meniscus simply because I am happy with the choices for 4x5 film.

[mdarnton]

Reinhold never says much, so I'll speculate. I think I know where his glass comes from, and therefore suspect that the grind is optimized to a more modern way that is a tiny bit better color corrected (within the very obvious limits that a one-element lens would have) than would have been the case in 1840 or whenever. I shoot only x-ray film, and haven't noticed focus shifting problem from visual vs film focus, which I am certainly grateful for, however, I do try to focus to the front in the DOF, so this is probably just the compensation it likes?

Regarding comparisons, my 335mm Reinhold-Wollaston doesn't start out wide open at f/4.6 as "crummy" as my 11-3/4" Verito is at f/4, which given how fast these things clear up and go sharp when stopped down even a bit, probably should not be a surprise. It is, however, plenty diffuse enough, regardless.

On the other hand the 12" Fujinon SF is so much like a bad "sharp" lens, rather than a soft focus, that I don't ever bother with it--f5.6 is probably about a stop slower than it should be for the effects we like.

I like the Wollaston, and have been thinking of getting another, shorter one for my Graflex instead of blowing a lot of cash on a Verito, but I do definitely regret the Fujinon purchase: they seem to have made SF just about as lame as possible with that one.

[SergeiR]

The holy grail of gear porn. Size matters. Aero Ektar 178/2.5. wide open. I call it a smooth lens. The chair has yummy bokeh. My daughter is not soft. I think this can do good stuff without looking cliche. I look forward to playing with it more.

Now now.. ;) 150mm/f2.8 Xenotar.. ;)

[alanbutler57]

Thanks JP and Michael,
I've got Reinhold's 190 but admit I've not shot it much. I may grind down the flange to use it with the Super D instead of the Speed so I'll be more tempted to take it out and try it.