Resolving Power of Nineteenth Century Lenses?

[Hmuessig]

Hoping for some help from the collected experiences here:

I'm doing some research on nineteenth century cameras and lenses and am wondering how good the lenses actually were (are). I have some examples of the results from lenses used to produce stereographs (roughly 3" to 5" focal lengths). 30 to 40 lppm is entirely possible looking at first generation (contact) prints. What about other lenses and other formats? 5x7, 8x10, or mammoth plate (17 x 22") lenses.

The challenge here is that negatives (wet plate) almost never exist, only the albumen (contact) prints. And many of these prints are likely second or third generation prints from copy negatives with the degradation of the image sharpness.

Any information, test results, qualitative impressions would be greatly appreciated.

Hans

[pgk]

Easy enough to try them on a modern digital camera. Centrally even early lenses can be surprisingly good but they seem to fall off quickly. And FWIW I have a stereo lens from 1865 which performs much better close up than at infinity, so you need to be careful in terms of where they perform best. Somewhere I have an MTF chart from an 1850s Doublet generated by computer (from a lens designer friend who is active on the forum) which shows poorer performance than one of these lenses appears to provide in practice so I suspect that there was more at play than we might appreciate (glass types? hand grinding precision?).

[arri]

What do you await? MTF curves of a 1880 made Petzval lens?
You can find a lot of soft focus lenses and very sharp lenses made in the 19th century.
The aplanate lenses are very sharp in the middle and good usable today as well.
Karl Blossfeld made all his pictures for his famous book "Kunstformen der Natur" with an aplanate lens, in 1927 and later.
Very good early anastigmat lenses were made in this century, the Dagor, Orthostigmat, Collinear, Protar and a lot of very good lenses made in England, France and USA too.
Josef Sudek made a lot of his pictures with a Protar f/18.
The problem is that we don´t know which lens someone used. I thing a lot of lenses, made in the 19th century are in use untill the 20th century.

Maybe a good way is to collect samples made with this old lenses, taken by us, now active photographers.

Last week I repaired a Goerz Lykeioskop 270mm f/6.3, made in the early 1890th. I made one shot with it to check if everything is correct working now. A very good lens and well build. I think it will do its job for the next 130 years!
For me an excellent lens and still usable. Tests and MTF are not interesting for me. The character of a lens is much more important, or not?

Today you can´t see any differens when the picture were taken by a Nikon, Fuji, Schneider or Rodenstock lens. Maybe the differencies are measureable but not visible.
But you can see the differencies between a Petzval lens, a retilinear, an early Anastigmat, a tele photo lens, an antiplanet, a landscape lens and many others more.

To reduce this lenses only to the measureable optical performance can´t be the way.

[Oren Grad]

Dan Fromm's invaluable list of information sources on LF lenses...

https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?138978-Where-to-look-for-information-on-LF-(mainly)-lenses&p=1390203&viewfull=1#post1390203

...includes a link to this remarkable site, which displays data on the optical behavior of many old lenses, calculated from their patent specifications or otherwise published formulas. It's easier to navigate if you know a bit of French, but Google Translate can help if you're totally lost, or you can figure it out by just clicking on everything to see where it takes you.

http://dioptrique.info/sommaire/sommaire.HTM

[ic-racer]

Near the end of 19th century, there were many very sharp lenses. For example this American made 'Landscape' lens by EH Anthony from the 1880s. It is very sharp.

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