Wollensak Velosigmat triple convert. question

[Robbie Bedell]

OK, I just yesterday got a Wollensak Velostigmat triple convertible Series 1 7 1/2-inch 6.3 lens for I think a good price. It had some haze in it but I got it open and it cleaned up nicely. (It looks like haze in the photo but there is none) In my research I have found info on a number of longer Wollensak triples and the series 1a but I am having a difficult time learning much, such as what are the focal lengths of the two longer lengths, etc. Do any of the experts have anything they can add? Has anyone actually used one? I have read that it is perhaps made by another company other that Wollensak (?). I like the look on my ground glass of the various combinations as I merge into a Josef Sudek personality. I am looking forward to making some exposures in the next few days. Thank you all! Robbie

185879

www.robbiebedell.photoshelter.com

[Robbie Bedell]

Sorry, I spelled Velostigmat incorrectly!

[Jim Noel]

I'm envious. I have been looking for one of those.

[Whir-Click]

The Wollensak brochures at Camera Eccentric are a fantastic resource: http://www.cameraeccentric.com/info.html

This page in particular should answer some of your Series I questions:185880

[Louis Pacilla]

You can read up on what Wollensak has to say about the Series 1 convertible here pages 12-13 http://www.cameraeccentric.com/html/info/wollensak_13.html

[mdarnton]

I assume you have figured out that this is not a Series 1a, which is a much more complex and modern lens. I have a couple of Series 1 lenses for 8x10 and they're sharp enough, but very vulnerable to flare.

The lens, like several of the original Wolly lenses, was originally the Royal Anastigmat. See the discussion on page 16, here: http://cameraeccentric.com/html/info/wollensak_10.html Lenses are on the next page.

Wollensak started as a shutter maker, and when they added lenses, they bought the Royal line and the maker, the Rochester Lens Company, see more here:
https://www.westechoptical.com/blog/the-wollensak-optical-company

They dumped the Series 1 relatively early, but kept making the f/9.5 wide angle Series III almost the the end.

[Robbie Bedell]

Thank you guys. I had seen that but I suppose I glanced over it as it shows the Optimo shutter...But this does help! Thank you!

[Robbie Bedell]

I assume you have figured out that this is not a Series 1a, which is a much more complex and modern lens. I have a couple of Series 1 lenses for 8x10 and they're sharp enough, but very vulnerable to flare.

The lens, like several of the original Wolly lenses, was originally the Royal Anastigmat, made by another company that Wollensak purchased. See the discussion on page 16, here: http://cameraeccentric.com/html/info/wollensak_10.html

Yes, I figured that one out...and it does seem flary...

[Robbie Bedell]

I'm envious. I have been looking for one of those.

I got lucky. It came up on ebay with a 'buy it now' and I bought it quick!

[Mark Sawyer]

For those looking for an affordable alternative to the Cooke VX Triple Convertible, the Wollensak Raptar Triple Convertible seems somewhat related, at least in layout, with the Raptar losing an interior air-glass space front and rear. I'm not sure how its construction relates to the earlier Wolly Double and Triple Convertibles. (My Raptar TC performs very well, though I can only imagine a Cooke's look from others' work.)

[William Whitaker]

Robbie,

I'm glad you brought up this subject. I also have a 7 1/2" Velostigmat. But it is a Series II and thus f/4.5 and in a Betax 4 for the correspondingly larger glass. What makes it very interesting to me is that it covers (or at least it illuminates well) my 8x10 ground glass. That, to me, was pretty astonishing for an f/4.5 design. I just checked it out again and sure enough, it fills the 8x10. Mine has a bit of haze and could do with a good cleaning. As if I don't have enough else to do! But this is something I've been wanting to explore and had forgotten until I saw this thread.

I'm fond of the old commercial lenses - the Velostigmats, Tessar 1C's and the like. They have a lot of creative potential. And they're often quite inexpensive. Many of mine were essentially "free" as they often were acquired as part of a camera purchase back in my early Ebay days.

I can't offer you any useful information here yet, unfortunately, but hope that you enjoy your Velostigmat!

[jnantz]

hey robbie
i have a long 1a triple ( 18-24-28" )
and it is one of my favorite lenses...
it is also in a betax shutter but the big one ..
have fun with your new lens !
john

[Robbie Bedell]

Robbie,

I'm glad you brought up this subject. I also have a 7 1/2" Velostigmat. But it is a Series II and thus f/4.5 and in a Betax 4 for the correspondingly larger glass. What makes it very interesting to me is that it covers (or at least it illuminates well) my 8x10 ground glass. That, to me, was pretty astonishing for an f/4.5 design. I just checked it out again and sure enough, it fills the 8x10. Mine has a bit of haze and could do with a good cleaning. As if I don't have enough else to do! But this is something I've been wanting to explore and had forgotten until I saw this thread.

I'm fond of the old commercial lenses - the Velostigmats, Tessar 1C's and the like. They have a lot of creative potential. And they're often quite inexpensive. Many of mine were essentially "free" as they often were acquired as part of a camera purchase back in my early Ebay days.

I can't offer you any useful information here yet, unfortunately, but hope that you enjoy your Velostigmat!

Thank you very much William. I guess yours is a twin larger brother, though mine is the 6.3. I have been playing with it in all of it's configurations. At it's longer lengths wide open it really almost appears to be a soft-focus lens. But then stopping down it sharpens and really seems to attain it's flat field. It looks as if I will have to cobble up two different size filter arrangements on mine as the front and rear groups are differing diameters. I will make photos soon...It's strange that I have both 150 and 210 Schneider convertibles and I really could care less about using the longer lengths on those but I am itching to see what this 'new' lens does.Thanks again William and Happy New Year! Robbie

[Robbie Bedell]

hey robbie
i have a long 1a triple ( 18-24-28" )
and it is one of my favorite lenses...
it is also in a betax shutter but the big one ..
have fun with your new lens !
john

Thank you John. I think this will become one of my favorites!! Happy New Year! Robbie

[William Whitaker]

At it's longer lengths wide open it really almost appears to be a soft-focus lens. But then stopping down it sharpens and really seems to attain it's flat field.

That characteristic is typical of lenses of this ilk and vintage. In fact, it was an attribute mentioned in a fair number of vintage ads and catalog pages as it allowed the same lens to be used at wide apertures for portraiture and at smaller apertures for commercial subjects. This made it economically viable for the "working stiff" photographer, the guy who had to make a living yet didn't have the resources to line his shelves with every lens that came along.

[Dan Fromm]

For those looking for an affordable alternative to the Cooke VX Triple Convertible, the Wollensak Raptar Triple Convertible seems somewhat related, at least in layout, with the Raptar losing an interior air-glass space front and rear. I'm not sure how its construction relates to the earlier Wolly Double and Triple Convertibles. (My Raptar TC performs very well, though I can only imagine a Cooke's look from others' work.)

Mark, the Cooke is best thought of as modified 4/4 double Gauss type. The Raptar Triple Convertible is a sorta almost not quite Dagor. Double anastigmat with two cells composed of bunches of elements all cemented. From the early 1890s (after Zeiss announced their Anastigmats, later rebadged Protar) until just before WW I many of the leading lens makers produced double anastigmats with cells composed of as many as five cemented elements. I read about many of them when I was working on my Berthiot article. Lotsa elements to get more degrees of freedom for correcting aberrations, all cemented to minimize air-glass interfaces to improve contrast and transmission. After WW I tessar types became much more important for general purpose lenses.

[Mark Sawyer]

Hi Dan, I was going by the basic structure: both have eight elements, the same mixture of bi-concave, bi-convex, positive- and negative menisci, all in exactly the same order. Both are, from the front: Negative meniscus/positive meniscus/bi-convex/bi-concave/aperture/negative meniscus/bi-convex/positive meniscus/negative meniscus. Both are quite asymmetrical designs compared to the double Gauss, which is a paired set of the original Gauss telescope objective if 1817, (though heavily modified thereafter).

The Cooke split the elements into four groups instead of two, introducing four more interior air-glass surfaces, but also adding four more curves to be freely manipulated. Wollensak has them cemented into two groups. While they each had their own tweaks, by looking at the layout, they seem quite related.

[Dan Fromm]

The air spaces add degrees of freedom.

Edit, afterthought. Now that I think of it, Mark, by your logic a 6/4 plasmat type is the same thing as a 6/2 dagor type. Do you want to carry your idea that far?

[Mark Sawyer]

The air spaces add degrees of freedom.

Edit, afterthought. Now that I think of it, Mark, by your logic a 6/4 plasmat type is the same thing as a 6/2 dagor type. Do you want to carry your idea that far?

As the Plasmat is a derivative of the Dagor and was known as the "air-spaced Dagor" (Kingslake called it the "separated Dagor") before being called a Plasmat, I'd say they are very closely related. Which is pretty much what I'd say about the Cooke and Raptar Triple Convertibles.

[goamules]

From the lens diagrams, I've got to say they're exactly the same. Except for one being cemented where there is air spacing in the other, which doesn't add or subtract any optical effect other than some light loss, they optically mirror each other.

[desertrat]

For those looking for an affordable alternative to the Cooke VX Triple Convertible, the Wollensak Raptar Triple Convertible seems somewhat related, at least in layout, with the Raptar losing an interior air-glass space front and rear. I'm not sure how its construction relates to the earlier Wolly Double and Triple Convertibles. (My Raptar TC performs very well, though I can only imagine a Cooke's look from others' work.)
The 1A Raptar was a copy of the VIIa Protar, identical. The earlier series I Velostigmat had 8 elements in 4 groups like the Cooke XV, but the cemented doublets were much thinner.

The following link has a cutaway diagram of the Royal Anastigmat, which Wollensak renamed to Series I Velostigmat in 1908:

https://books.google.com/books?id=t3k1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA328&lpg=PA328&dq=royal+anastigmat+jahrbuch&source=bl&ots=Np6B-uJZIW&sig=lpbErWacnjydRMQJ3s0eG8CNPnU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiMuqPRjdLfAhVmjFQKHRgqCH0Q6AEwB3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=royal%20anastigmat%20jahrbuch&f=false

[Mark Sawyer]

It does seem (at least to me) the Protar VIIb, the Cooke XV, and the Wollensak convertibles are all fairly closely related in design. I'd never paid that much attention to the Protar before...

[Mark Crabtree]

The 1A Raptar was a copy of the VIIa Protar, identical. The earlier series I Velostigmat had 8 elements in 4 groups like the Cooke XV, but the cemented doublets were much thinner.

The following link has a cutaway diagram of the Royal Anastigmat, which Wollensak renamed to Series I Velostigmat in 1908:

https://books.google.com/books?id=t3k1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA328&lpg=PA328&dq=royal+anastigmat+jahrbuch&source=bl&ots=Np6B-uJZIW&sig=lpbErWacnjydRMQJ3s0eG8CNPnU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiMuqPRjdLfAhVmjFQKHRgqCH0Q6AEwB3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=royal%20anastigmat%20jahrbuch&f=false

The 1A always seemed to me to be a Protar VIIa knockoff, except usually the front cell is slower than the rear like with a Turner Reich triple convertible. I have wondered if that is part of the reason they don't have quite as much coverage as a Protar. I do have a 13/20/25 1/2" 1a Velostigmat that is f12.5 front and back like a Protar, but have never used it to know whether it covers more.

The Series 1 (as opposed to 1A) has interested me. It seems likely to have been designed by Ernst Gundlach, who seems to have been ahead of his time for once, or at least ahead of Cooke. Still, a lot of air/glass surfaces for an uncoated lens. The Royal line was from a descendant of Gundlach's last Rochester company.

Mark

[desertrat]

With my series I Velostigmat, I've never noticed any flare, but then I've never used it with the sun if front of the camera. I've also never noticed any loss of contrast except when the lens was wide open. At my usual 8X10 shooting apertures of f32 or smaller, contrast seems to be about the same as other lenses having only half as many air-glass interfaces.

[Mark Sawyer]

With my series I Velostigmat, I've never noticed any flare, but then I've never used it with the sun if front of the camera. I've also never noticed any loss of contrast except when the lens was wide open. At my usual 8X10 shooting apertures of f32 or smaller, contrast seems to be about the same as other lenses having only half as many air-glass interfaces.

Could be a little bloom on there by now?

[desertrat]

Could be a little bloom on there by now?
Bloom? If you mean the natural tarnish that sometimes forms on old lenses and behaves like a natural coating, I haven't noticed that when looking at reflections of light sources on the surfaces.

The series I cells have an external retaining ring on the rear that unscrews easily and allows the inner doublet to be removed easily, giving access to all the air-glass surfaces for cleaning.