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Ig Nacio
19-Feb-2019, 17:29
Hi,

How does one start to recognize the differences among lenses?
It looks like one big family ; ) !!!

I mean, out of curiosity, I was looking at the family names
among this one brand: Schneider, for example, and it seems
to me it is the same with almost any other manufaturer!

Look at these (sub)names. All of them are Schneider.
APO-Symmar
Symmar-S

Sometimes even the brand name, Schneider, is written as Schneider,
and other times as Schneider Kreuznach.

I don't know if this reveals anything about age or the way they
perform, etc. I mean, I think each 'family' may have something
interesting or that attracts LF photographers. How could I know,
how could I know more?

Thank you, kind regards!

jp
19-Feb-2019, 17:49
It's like cars... Add some letters to the model name and it's a new and better revision. Learn the history of the manufacturer and you will figure out some differences. Sort of like reading old car brochures.

The Kreuznach is the factory location and can be sometimes useful in determining the ages of lenses.
Like if a lens says Carl Zeiss Jena it's probably pre-coldwar if it's uncoated and east German (less desirable) if it's coated (post WWII)
In our global world we sorta pretend it doesn't matter where something is made if the right people are in charge, but traditionally some places are known and well regarded for their craftsmanship at times in history.

Ig Nacio
19-Feb-2019, 18:06
Hi,

Thank you for your message : ) !!!

One thing seems to me in the world of LF lenses.
It is that all, but all lenses are good! That as
opposed to MF and 35 mm. lenses, isn't?
For example, if anybody buys a Schneider lens,
(I asume that) it is very good
EVEN IF
it does or does not have:

Kreuznach written next to ScHNEIDER
APO written next to Symmar
A letter like the 'S' written next to Symmar
etc., etc. etc.

It is almost like saying: "All Schneider are good!"
isn't??

And if you see pictures taken with a specific brand
like: Rodenstock, Fuji, or Nikon, and you like the
way that brand 'sculpts light', then all of the models
in that brand name will generally be optically good
and 'congruent' among them. This generalization
wouldn't be so true for MF and 35 mm. What do
you think?

Kind regards!

Tin Can
19-Feb-2019, 18:12
Buy and sell what you hate.

ymmv

Read old catalogs online, almost all are online.

Buy good shutters, way more of those are now a crapshoot.

Ig Nacio
19-Feb-2019, 18:17
Hi,

That is the thing too, shutters are not being
made any more, isn't?

BTW, who services these large format lenses
and their shutters? Is there a thread to that,
perhaps? I am curious to know if repair and
maintenance shops will still be a while among
us.

Kind regards!

Dan Fromm
19-Feb-2019, 18:24
Lenses have attributes. Focal length, maximum aperture, coverage, design type, weight, size of filter threads, ...

Ig, I don't know why you think that all lenses made by a manufacturer have the same character, whatever that means.

I don't mean to insult you and I could be mistaken, but your questions make me think that you know very little. If you really know very little, you'll get next to nothing from posts. This site has resources. Go to largeformatphotography.info and read the FAQs and articles.

We have another resource that isn't where I just directed you to go. The first post in this https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?138978-Where-to-look-for-information-on-LF-(mainly)-lenses discussion has a link to a list of links to all sorts of information on LF. The list contains brief reviews of highly-recommended books on LF photography. Go to the list, pick a book and study it. You'll learn more from it, and more efficiently, than you will from discussions here.

Tin Can
19-Feb-2019, 18:29
I just read almost all your posts back to 2011.

I hope you read more of ours.

https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?76511-Advice-sought-LF-camera-for-quot-fashion-quot-portraiture-amp-general-use-scanner&p=731741#post731741

Good fortune.

Drew Wiley
19-Feb-2019, 18:30
It's fun to look back in history and see what let up to this. Rudolf Kingslake wrote an excellent little book about the history of lens design, with who came up with certain patents and marketing names.

ic-racer
19-Feb-2019, 20:05
I suspect the identification nomenclature comes from one of the following. Most of the time it makes no sense and sometimes identification labels are ambiguous or even absent.

Marketing
Engineering
Inventory/Logistics

Pere Casals
19-Feb-2019, 20:17
how could I know more?


Here you have all schneider list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schneider_Kreuznach#Large_format_lenses

Simply locate at ebay the models, each model has a distinctive look, general purpose are:
3.4 Symmar
3.5 Symmar-S
3.6 Apo-Symmar
3.7 Apo-Symmar L-Series
3.8 Super-Symmar HM
3.9 Super-Symmar XL

Regarding age, you know that from serial number:
https://www.schneideroptics.com/info/age_of_lenses/

These (correction) were the last in production/sold before discontinuation:
https://www.schneideroptics.com/ecommerce/CatalogSubCategoryDisplay.aspx?CID=162

These are vintage:
https://www.schneideroptics.com/info/vintage_lens_data/large_format_lenses/index.htm

Oren Grad
19-Feb-2019, 20:48
These are in production:
https://www.schneideroptics.com/ecommerce/CatalogSubCategoryDisplay.aspx?CID=162

All Schneider large format lens lines are out of production. Even on the Schneider US website, if you click through you will see that every LF item is tagged "Discontinued".

andrewch59
19-Feb-2019, 21:02
I often go on fee-bay, searching for LF lenses, if I spot something I dont know ( there's lots), I google it and look for a LFP entry in the google results. There is normally someone on LFP who has given information on what you are looking at, and so your knowledge grows.

Jody_S
19-Feb-2019, 21:21
One thing seems to me in the world of LF lenses.
It is that all, but all lenses are good! That as
opposed to MF and 35 mm. lenses,

There have been no consumer-grade lf lenses since perhaps the 1930s. All of the lenses sold in modern shutters were marketed and sold to professional commercial photographers (though there have always been amateur lf practitioners who did also purchase). Comparing lf lenses to mass-produced 35mm lenses or point&shoots is like comparing any professional tool to those sold at the big box stores to weekend warriors. Yes, you might find a good tool at your local hardware store, but you have a much better chance of finding good tools at industrial equipment suppliers or tool rental shops.

neil poulsen
19-Feb-2019, 23:05
Here are some guidelines to maybe get you started . . .

o Don't worry about buying used. In decades, I've never purchased a new, large format lens. (35mm digital, yes; LF, no.) Ditto large format cameras.

o LF lenses don't necessarily have to be multi-coated, either. Some photographers prefer single coated lenses.

o For non wide-angle (>=135mm), Plasmat design lenses are the usual choice. That is, Schneider Symmars, Rodenstock Sironars, Nikkor "W's", or Fuji Fujinon "W's". (Fuji lenses get a little complicaed, because of the number of choices.) These lenses tend to have maximum apertures of f5.6 for lenses up to, but non necessarily including 360mm.

o For wide-angle and super-wides (<=125mm), the typical choices are Schneider Super-Angulons, Rodenstock Grandagons, Nikkor "SW", and Fuji Fujinon "SW" or "SWD".

o A third category are lenses that tend to have lighter weights than the above. These are useful for some super-wides, and are the preferred choice for lenses with focal lengths greater than 300mm. (This line is blurry; some would say these are the preferred choice for lenses over 180mm.)

Here are some examples . . .

>> The f9 G-Claron Schneider 150mm, 240mm, and 360mm are excellent, single-coated lenses that have coverage that corresponds to their larger cousins. These were designed for closer-up, process work. But stopped down, they perform admirably.

>> Another, lighter-weight series of lenses are the Nikkor M multi-coated f9 300mm and 450mm lenses. In fact, the Nikkor M 300mm has a smaller, Copal 1 shutter.

>> Specifically, the Fuji 250mm Fujinon with inside labeling has large coverage, and unlike their larger 240mm Plasmat counter parts, has a Copal 1 shutter. (Much smaller).

>> For additional coverage, there are the rather exotic Computar f9 lenses that are also smaller, lighter lenses.

>> For wide-angle lenses, the Schneider Angulons don't have quite as wide coverage as the Super Angulons and may not be as sharp. But, they're quite a bit lighter and smaller.

>> The Fujinon A lenses are quite a bit smaller as well, and can have smaller shutters.

o A fourth category might be the golden-oldies. e.g. Dagors, Kodak Ektars, etc. I tend to stay away from these lenses. For example, Dagors can experience focus shift. One might focus with the aperture wide-open; but the focus can shift as one stops down. Not a desirable feature in a lens.

Mark Sawyer
19-Feb-2019, 23:50
In modern lenses, (anything post WWII), pretty much everything is coated and has excellent performance. A reliable shutter is more important than which brand of glass.

Older lenses are popular among people who really appreciate their sometimes subtle, sometimes striking signatures. It's an acquired taste that takes time to acquire.

Daniel Casper Lohenstein
20-Feb-2019, 02:32
Hi,

How does one start to recognize the differences among lenses?
It looks like one big family ; ) !!!


Hi,

perhaps it makes sense to differenciate your question. It doesn't seem to be answered quickly, as Dan Fromm wrote. And there are really useful attempts to cope with this question in this thread.

1. To see differences between lenses you have to get those lenses and shoot with them. This is costly. In real life it is impossible. Fortunately you will never stop learning and experiencing. This is one aspect of the process. Some love it. - OK: some lenses are for digital, some lenses are depreciated because they're too old to be modern, uncoated, single coated, some lenses are for 4x5 others for 8x10. You make an initial choice, corresponding to brochures and to your workflow.

2. Even if you have all lenses of a product line (eg the Symmars from 1960 to today) or a given focal length (eg. 150mm) you will have to photograph with them, always the same subject, and you will have to enlarge the photographs to see the differences. With 6 different kinds of Symmars or 150mm standard lenses you will have to pay a lot of money to take and enlarge 6 fine prints in tenfold enlargements - I query that we see differences in a 8x10 print.

3. In 1. and 2. I talked about black and white prints. Now imagine you want to compare colour prints ... This is even more costly. And you have to control the whole color management. This is something that Schneider can perfom in it's factory in Bad Kreuznach. But the results will remain quite abstract because:

4. it's easy to shoot brick walls or test images or look through collimators and microscopes etc. How do you compare bokeh, aberrations, coma, vignetting ... in real world conditions? - You will have to go further and make more prints. This is even more expensive.

5. You will have to be trained to compare these prints. Like the great and admired Edmund Husserl said ("Logische Untersuchungen"): there aren't only sensual but also categorical assumptions, and you have to know your categories, your questions, to ask the subject what it reveals to you.

- This, nr. 5., is how I understood your initial questions. IMHO this is a quite subversive question. Perhaps this is why you got some hash answers. It shows that most of the kaisers are naked in their clothes (a German fairy tale) because very few people test their lenses like mentioned above and few people developed categories to understand the performance of their gear.

I think it's significant that Ansel Adams in "The Camera" concentrated on the depth effect of a lens, as the penetration of real space in constitution of pictorial space, realized with different focal lengths, given an intended reproduction scale of a main subject, instead of an abstract sharpness in the corners. This shows that it is more important to know how a focal length should be employed to get a specific spatial effect, than coping with accidential data of a given lens in relation to sharpness at twentyfold enlargement etc.

Regards

Pfsor
20-Feb-2019, 03:40
- This, nr. 5., is how I understood your initial questions. IMHO this is a quite subversive question. Perhaps this is why you got some hash answers. It shows that most of the kaisers are naked in their clothes (a German fairy tale) because very few people test their lenses like mentioned above and few people developed categories to understand the performance of their gear.



Not a German fairy tale.

"The Emperor's New Clothes" (Danish: Kejserens nye klæder) is a short tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen.

Steven Tribe
20-Feb-2019, 04:05
+1 !

H.C. Andersen is not the same as the Brothers Grimm - who I believe Daniel was thinking about about!

Everyone who recounts this story says:

" a little boy called out that the kaiser was undressed "

In fact, Andersen wrote "a child called out....." !

LATER:

I was a little hasty! It appears that H.C. Andersen did, in fact, have a German source for his
"original" story. The "So ist der Lauf der Welt" is a German version of a Spanish fable from around 1300! The plot is basically identical! My compliments to Daniel for his expert knowledge!

More here : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

Pfsor
20-Feb-2019, 04:20
Right! Let us not forget that in Denmark even little girls know about their gender equality with little boys! :)

Pere Casals
20-Feb-2019, 04:36
All Schneider large format lens lines are out of production.

Ok, post corrected: https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?150725-How-does-one-start-to-recognize-the-differences-among-lenses&p=1484933&viewfull=1#post1484933

jnantz
20-Feb-2019, 04:59
Buy and sell what you hate.

ymmv

Read old catalogs online, almost all are online.

Buy good shutters, way more of those are now a crapshoot.

+1

Pfsor
20-Feb-2019, 05:24
Ok, post corrected: https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?150725-How-does-one-start-to-recognize-the-differences-among-lenses&p=1484933&viewfull=1#post1484933


Ok, post corrected: https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?150725-How-does-one-start-to-recognize-the-differences-among-lenses&p=1484933&viewfull=1#post1484933


Ok, post corrected: https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?150725-How-does-one-start-to-recognize-the-differences-among-lenses&p=1484933&viewfull=1#post1484933

Pere, what happened? Too a long session on trichromic photography? I worry.

Pere Casals
20-Feb-2019, 05:50
Pere, what happened? Too a long session on trichromic photography? I worry.

:) No...

every day the forum hungs during a few minutes, and if one retries posting the reply then the reply gets posted inadvertedly several times.

This happens everyday around midday in central EU time, that I guess this is the interval with lowest activity and some regular maintenance operation is scheduled...

Pfsor
20-Feb-2019, 06:25
Thanks, that calms me down. :)

Tin Can
20-Feb-2019, 06:33
I notice it about 12 UTC aka Zulu time which i wished we used everywhere in the world.

Whoever is rebooting the server has gotten much faster than a few years ago.

And I thank the programmer that supports this fine forum!


:) No...

every day the forum hungs during a few minutes, and if one retries posting the reply then the reply gets posted inadvertedly several times.

This happens everyday around midday in central EU time, that I guess this is the interval with lowest activity and some regular maintenance operation is scheduled...

Pere Casals
20-Feb-2019, 06:55
I notice it about 12 UTC aka Zulu time

I guess that this small interruption helps data consistency, perhaps it ensures a safe backup, just speculating.

Daniel Casper Lohenstein
20-Feb-2019, 07:48
Not a German fairy tale.

"The Emperor's New Clothes" (Danish: Kejserens nye klæder) is a short tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen ...

... who had his inspiration from Karl Eduard von Bülows (father of Hans von Bülow) translation of the book "El Conde Lucanor" by Don Juan Manuel, 1337, cf. http://www.zeno.org/M%C3%A4rchen/M/Spanien/Don+Juan+Manuel%3A+Der+Graf+Lucanor/7.+Was+einem+K%C3%B6nige+mit+drei+Sch%C3%A4lken+begegnet

q.e.d. : we are all uninformed.

BTW. I said it was a german tale because I didn't know whether people from the U.S. know this tale, so I wanted to short cut this. (Of course the tale in its modern form comes from Andersen. Every child in Germany knows Andersens tales. Apparently I adopted Andersen. I vote for a honorary citizenship of Andersen. He found very much approval in Germany of the 1830ies. There are even Andersen sculptures in Germany!) I am sure Americans know tales that I don't know, but this is exactly what I wanted to show: there is always somebody who wants to tell you the obvious truth that isn't a truth at all, in the end. It's the same with lenses. There is a lot of people out there who talk about lenses that they never owned.

Daniel Casper Lohenstein
20-Feb-2019, 08:05
Hi, the Grimm brothers invented their tales, as far as I know. These tales weren't popular tales but pure inventions. It's quite amusing seeing structuralists analyzing the plots of those tales and finding structural principles.

Grandpa Ron
20-Feb-2019, 08:17
One of the things I have learned, is high end professional products are often separated by nuances and personal choice.

Musical instruments, audiophile gear, shotguns, telescopes and even golf clubs reach a quality level where "feel" and other intangibles become a factor. One person's too heavy is another's solid feel. I might find some item too complicated while other find it precise.

Kind of like, which is the best beer.

Pfsor
20-Feb-2019, 08:22
... who had his inspiration from Karl Eduard von Bülows (father of Hans von Bülow) translation of the book "El Conde Lucanor" by Don Juan Manuel, 1337, cf. http://www.zeno.org/M%C3%A4rchen/M/Spanien/Don+Juan+Manuel%3A+Der+Graf+Lucanor/7.+Was+einem+K%C3%B6nige+mit+drei+Sch%C3%A4lken+begegnet

q.e.d. : we are all uninformed.

BTW. I said it was a german tale because I didn't know whether people from the U.S. know this tale, so I wanted to short cut this.

Daniel, I forgive you...:)

Bernice Loui
20-Feb-2019, 09:16
There was a time in LF past, about one or maybe two generations ago when it was possible to work with a LF dealer to try out lenses before purchase. This was not too difficult as color transparency sheet film was readily available and processing at the local "Pro" lab took about two hours. These labs offered specialty services from gray card test with color densitometer readings, push-pull as needed. This made lens evaluations and calibration of lens-lighting-film-processing not too difficult. Once the system was calibrated and set up the resulting images were mostly predictable.

Personal experience and opportunity offered by friendly dealers back then allowed testing a huge number of LF lenses then selecting only the ones of preference. This is what has resulted in the lens set of today. This was also the history and experience of how modern Plasmats became excluded from the lens set and essentially Kodak Ektars, Xenar, Dagor, APO Artars ended up as the lenses of choice for normal to long focal lengths. Wide angle lenses ended up with Rodenstock Grandagon and Schneider XL series due to the improved performance of modern LF wide angles. Their trade off is size and bulk.


Only way to really know the personality of any given lens is to use it in real world image-making. Testing is OK, but it is simply not enough and will not reveal the personality of any given lens until enough prints have been made using it.

Numerous times posted here is the inherent problem of lens in shutter. For most this is one of the deciding factors for lens choices. IMO, lenses in shutter is too severe a limitation. This is how the Sinar shutter and the Sinar system in general became the overwhelming preference with the exception of LF wide angles lenses due to their inherent design they are better in shutter than not.

Lenses DO have a visual personality and is completely dependent on the needs of the image-maker. For those who are into high contrast images with an etch image result, modern Plasmats could be the choice with the trade off being loss of contrast subtlety and out of focus rendition. If the image maker is of the, "Everything in the image to appear SHARP" and using f22 or smaller is the typical practice, again, the modern Plasmat could be the proper choice.

Then we have the obsession with image circle or coverage. Realistically, lenses for 8x10 and larger is inherently problematic due to the image circle required. This often results in hefty lenses and hefty shutters. Compounding this problem is the current interest in taking that 8x10 camera out in the field and hiking which results in the want-need of lenses that are small-lightweight-compact with HUGE image circles and enough full aperture to easily focus. These are conflicting design trade offs which drives a lens design in very specific ways.

Simply put, the broadest, modest cost, easily available lenses made over the long history of LF is for 4x5 and 5x7. Once stepping up to 8x10 and larger the problems become quite visible.


There have been many emotionally charged threads over the course of LFF history. IMO, most have NOT been constructive. Fact is, majority of LF lenses produce after WW-II are pointed towards the working and serious photographer. This intrinsic lens design goal results in majority of excellent and few lesser. What can happen is over the course of a lens life, stuff can and does happen to them. From adhesive failure (separation) glass or mechanical damage, lens taken apart by the unqualified and put back together in weird ways, shutters swapped with no regard for the original shutter spacing set during production to achieve specified optical results. These problems are compounded by older lenses due to them being.... older.

Question becomes how does one develop their points of visual reference and preferences for optics-film-print? Honestly I'm not convinced there is an absolute point of reference, there are only what the image maker needs to produce expressive creative work. Suggestion here would be visit the local museums with a GOOD photography collection and a GOOD photographic gallery or local show to look study and many prints as possible. From there it is possible to develop a sense for what image style agrees or does not agree.



Bernice







Hi,

perhaps it makes sense to differenciate your question. It doesn't seem to be answered quickly, as Dan Fromm wrote. And there are really useful attempts to cope with this question in this thread.

1. To see differences between lenses you have to get those lenses and shoot with them. This is costly. In real life it is impossible. Fortunately you will never stop learning and experiencing. This is one aspect of the process. Some love it. - OK: some lenses are for digital, some lenses are depreciated because they're too old to be modern, uncoated, single coated, some lenses are for 4x5 others for 8x10. You make an initial choice, corresponding to brochures and to your workflow.

2. Even if you have all lenses of a product line (eg the Symmars from 1960 to today) or a given focal length (eg. 150mm) you will have to photograph with them, always the same subject, and you will have to enlarge the photographs to see the differences. With 6 different kinds of Symmars or 150mm standard lenses you will have to pay a lot of money to take and enlarge 6 fine prints in tenfold enlargements - I query that we see differences in a 8x10 print.

3. In 1. and 2. I talked about black and white prints. Now imagine you want to compare colour prints ... This is even more costly. And you have to control the whole color management. This is something that Schneider can perfom in it's factory in Bad Kreuznach. But the results will remain quite abstract because:

4. it's easy to shoot brick walls or test images or look through collimators and microscopes etc. How do you compare bokeh, aberrations, coma, vignetting ... in real world conditions? - You will have to go further and make more prints. This is even more expensive.

5. You will have to be trained to compare these prints. Like the great and admired Edmund Husserl said ("Logische Untersuchungen"): there aren't only sensual but also categorical assumptions, and you have to know your categories, your questions, to ask the subject what it reveals to you.

- This, nr. 5., is how I understood your initial questions. IMHO this is a quite subversive question. Perhaps this is why you got some hash answers. It shows that most of the kaisers are naked in their clothes (a German fairy tale) because very few people test their lenses like mentioned above and few people developed categories to understand the performance of their gear.

I think it's significant that Ansel Adams in "The Camera" concentrated on the depth effect of a lens, as the penetration of real space in constitution of pictorial space, realized with different focal lengths, given an intended reproduction scale of a main subject, instead of an abstract sharpness in the corners. This shows that it is more important to know how a focal length should be employed to get a specific spatial effect, than coping with accidential data of a given lens in relation to sharpness at twentyfold enlargement etc.

Regards

Daniel Casper Lohenstein
20-Feb-2019, 10:21
There was a time in LF past ... Question becomes how does one develop their points of visual reference and preferences for optics-film-print? Honestly I'm not convinced there is an absolute point of reference, there are only what the image maker needs to produce expressive creative work. Suggestion here would be visit the local museums with a GOOD photography collection and a GOOD photographic gallery or local show to look study and many prints as possible. From there it is possible to develop a sense for what image style agrees or does not agree.


Wise words.

John Kasaian
23-Feb-2019, 20:35
So what was the OP's question again?
Recognizing a lens from a print? Or recognizing a lens from focusing on the GG?
I'm confused!

No sheet of film ever knew the name engraved on the barrel of the lens the camera wore.

Some lenses can be identified by unique qualities like the swirlies associated with Petzvals, or the sharpness associated with APO designs, or the 3-D "feel" associated with Heliars. But sometimes not, depending on how the lens is used.

Probably the easy route is to shoot and print with a single lens for several years, like say a Commercial Ektar.
Then, at least you'll be able to identify how a photograph taken with a Commercial Ektar looks.
Maybe.

OTOH as the OP has already observed. most all LF lenses in good condition do a pretty good job of taking photographs.
Aside from stuff like the qualities mentioned ^^^above ^^^I doubt if many people can go to a gallery and say this was
shot with a Nikon or that was shot with a Rodenstock or here is a photo taken with a Wollensak.

YMMV and I've got cataracts anyway.
Yesterday driving down I-15 in Utah I saw a highway sign with an arrow pointing in the direction of the town of Hurricane and it looked like a ? inside a beehive (highway signs in Utah look like beehives) and only when I was right on top of the turnoff did I notice that it wasn't a ? but a 7:o
For a brief few seconds I thought the Utah Highway Department had quite a sense of humor, LOL!

LabRat
24-Feb-2019, 17:22
So to summarize, all undamaged/unaltered
/unadultered lenses will shoot an image, but for one's taste they have slightly different renderings, but as mentioned, most viewers won't know by looking, and depending on the style and process of the shooter, YMMV...

Reminds me of photo students who come back with some old, cheap camera from somewhere and am sure the images will have some unique magic to them, but usually some lens that was made to give the best performance for that price point back when, in other words, the lens was made the best it could be by them, but not an attempt to make a bad lens (even if it ended up being not-so-great)...

Pick any lens and work with it... If you hit problems that prevent the image from moving in the right direction, try another to see if you are crazy, or maybe it is not right for you... But this takes time and testing, and you might have to get better with it to acheve results you like...

Get busy...

Steve K

Tin Can
24-Feb-2019, 18:07
Somewhere I have a 60's Burke & James lens rental and sales catalog. While I am old enough, i just wasn't doing LF, never even heard of it and at age 16 in 1967 when I moved to Chicago I was content shooting 35mm.

The B&J catalog is incredible, with every lens ever discussed here in it. All easily available at that time. Loaners, rentals, bargains just as Bernice experienced. And others many here.

I collect LF catalogs, buy LF gear willy-nilly as it comes along and fiddle with it. I do use LF, and sometimes I make a print I like. For my wall.

Since LF gear is way cheaper than ever, plentiful and obscure, it gets me out of bed instead of grumbling too much. A challenge.

We all know that everything LF and film in any form will most likely become extremely rare in 100's or 1000's of years.

Do it now!

Paul Ron
26-Feb-2019, 13:21
like everything in life, ya gotta try m all.

andrewch59
27-Feb-2019, 01:09
I great resource on lenses and how utterly amazing you can get them to perform is Jim Galli's tonopah pictures. Yes I know most are soft lenses, but have a look at his Eddie lens, who would have thought, all it took was Jim's tenacity and another wall hanger is made.