schneideritis
8-Jan-2015, 06:51
Saw this trending on Facebook and several camera collecting forums yesterday. David Silver, big collector and historian in San Francisco, completed his lengthy research into Zeiss' beginnings in photographic lenses. I'm aware he was a longtime major collector and writer, but somehow he accumulated the largest chunk of lenses from the original Carl Zeiss Jena patent museum that anybody has seen since Burleigh Brooks stupidly broke up and sold off the entire lot over 40 years ago. What Silver collected and assembled again is astonishing. I mean, how in the world do these experts find things like this? Now that he's done with the research he put up a webpage to share images of many of the lenses here:
http://www.photographyhistory.com/zeisslenscollection.html
Don't stop at the top. They really are treasures and you got to scroll through the entire page. The best is the one at the bottom. Holy grail indeed! I have to say I'm looking forward to whatever he publishes on this early Zeiss history. I have photocopies of some of his old articles on 19th century cameras. Very good stuff. I'm also wondering what if any of these lenses he's going to put back on the market. You'd think some of them should go to Westlicht or whatever. That No. 1 must be worth a fortune. Can you imagine fitting some of those ancient LF wide-angles on a modern Sinar?
http://www.photographyhistory.com/zeisslenscollection.html
Don't stop at the top. They really are treasures and you got to scroll through the entire page. The best is the one at the bottom. Holy grail indeed! I have to say I'm looking forward to whatever he publishes on this early Zeiss history. I have photocopies of some of his old articles on 19th century cameras. Very good stuff. I'm also wondering what if any of these lenses he's going to put back on the market. You'd think some of them should go to Westlicht or whatever. That No. 1 must be worth a fortune. Can you imagine fitting some of those ancient LF wide-angles on a modern Sinar?