DIY Wollaston Landscape lenses and DIY Wollensack Portrait lenses

[xkaes]

These DIY lenses can be used for any subject, not just landscapes and portraits.


http://www.subclub.org/fujinon/softfocus.htm (http://www.subclub.org/fujinon/softfocus.htm)

[ridax]

That's a terribly misleading papar by a very ignorant person who obviously has quite an ill self-appreciation and is eager to be a world teacher, at any cost.

Supplementary lenses are NOT filters. A Veritar is NOT a Verito. The cemented lens group of the Veritar is FAR from being identical to the vast majority of the double-element supplementary lenses. And so is the Imagon and the other famous soft-focus lenses. An the last but not least: -

The Wollaston meniscus lens is a very special meniscus. It is called an anastigmatic meniscus (AKA point-focal lens, AKA Punktalglas). Such type of menisci were sometimes manufactured to be uses both as reading glasses and and as photographic supplementary lenses but again, the majority of both the reading glasses and the photographic supplementary lenses are of quite different types and have really nothing to do with the Wollaston lens.

A reliable way to obtain a real point-focal meniscus is to disassemble a Plasmat and use one of its inner glass elements alone. The aperture should stay at the same place the original Plasmat had. But the focal length of the meniscus would be considerably shorter then that of the complete Plasmat so usually quite a big Plasmat is needed, and the cost of the resulting Wollaston isn't peanuts at all.

Of course anybody is free to use any cheap glass from a nearby trash for their lenses, too. But mentioning noble names beside their trash glass lenses - the names like Wollaston and Wollensak - is really rude and totally inappropriate.

[mdarnton]

Totally agree.
I once tried to build a "Verito" that way and it was a disaster. Tried just switching out the front lens on mine and that was a disaster too.

The rainbow chart is silly bad.

You don't build a proper lens by just grabbing random pieces of anonymous glass out of a drawer. Cargo cult optics.