That 18" F6 P&S S II Semi Achromatic

[George Kara]

Is now mine folks. Yes the price might have been crazy, but this particular lens is quite a rarity.

I will be willing to lend this lens to various photographers here for the price of one very nice LF print from your portfolio. Preferable something in print over 8 1/2 x11. I would also (of course) like the print to be signed by you. I am primarily a painter and have quite a bit of paintings from various artists, I have only two very nice photographic prints 8x10 from the Frank(thunderbucket) Petronio and would like to add to my woefully inadequate collection. You know photographic books are nice but not the same as an original.

Now here is the deal boys and girls. Assuming I can cover myself on this from an insurance viewpoint. You would be responsible for all shipping charges and insurance - at the actual cost. Rental would be for lets say two weeks.

So what do you think?

George

scaryink.com

[seven]

how come ? according to ebay it did not sell. History:0 bids

[erie patsellis]

Seven, think of ebay as more of a marketing tool, not all sales end on the bay...

[seven]

erie - sure, but the auction ended hours ago...

[George Kara]

Umm seven?

Actually the deal was done last night. Ebay is often used as kind of classified ad. You can negotiate with the seller and if you come to an agreement, the auction is terminated early. The buyer saves money and the seller saves also as the large ebay fees can be avoided. This is a legit company - I wouldnt suggest such negotiations with most individuals.

[Jim Galli]

I will of course take you up on that offer. No hurries! I'm thinking the print might be from a negative made with the lens. Thanks for the generous offer.

[wfwhitaker]

Whew! Heady thought....

[seven]

George - congratulations.
you just gave me another reason never to deal with this seller. he should have ended the auction if the lens was sold.

anyway, if your offer is for real put me on the waiting list.

[Mark Sawyer]

If things come together, I'd like a spot on the waiting list for next summer. (I couldn't give the lens the time it deserves during the school year.) I'm just a bit down the road in Tucson!

[George Kara]

OK well this lens seems almost impossible to focus on my 4x5. I have enough bellows so this isnt the issue.

Changing my AS back to 8x10, it seems that it is much easier to focus and get it right.

Is there a reason that it should be easier to focus the larger format 8x10 vs 4x5? This is perplexing and doesnt make much sense to me.

George

[Dave Wooten]

George

That is perplexing, wonder if it is the difference in how your 2 ground glasses are responding to diffused image?

[George Kara]

Thanks Dave - both glasses are the arca swiss stock items. It would seem unusual that they would respond differently. I have tried virtually everything I can think of and cannot get a good image on the 4x5. I have stopped down the lens, changed locations and images etc. I am focusing on a cast of the bust of perikles and just cant find anything that is close to being in focus. Very weird and frustrating. I have no ideas. Any suggestion would be much appreciated.

My Cooke PS 945 is really a snap to focus wide open. I dont get it.

George

[Don7x17]

Thanks Dave - both glasses are the arca swiss stock items. It would seem unusual that they would respond differently. I have tried virtually everything I can think of and cannot get a good image on the 4x5. I have stopped down the lens, changed locations and images etc. I am focusing on a cast of the bust of perikles and just cant find anything that is close to being in focus. Very weird and frustrating. I have no ideas. Any suggestion would be much appreciated.

My Cooke PS 945 is really a snap to focus wide open. I dont get it.

George

George
Is there any chance that the cells aren't spaced properly?
Or that somehow something has slipped out of alignment internally to the cells? (single lens within cell shifted or rotated(you'd notice if loose).

Your experience sounds very frustrating after paying top dollar....

[George Kara]

HI Don

I dont think so. This appears to be a very simple set up. I think there are only two pieces of glass in the whole lens. They appear to be solid and the glass is in wonderful shape. I think I can focus accurately on the 8x10 and will try within the next couple of days. Your thoughts however I will certainly keep in mind within the next couple of weeks.

Regards

George

[Mark Sawyer]

I've never seen a P&S lens in the flesh, but I've seen quite a few original prints by photographers who used them back in the pictorial era. Some are very, very soft, with no underlying sharpness I could discern. This is just speculation, but perhaps you have a very soft version of the lens. (They varied from example to example, as each was hand-aspherized to introduce aberrations.)

Have you tried focusing it closed down a bit, using a loupe?

And out of curiousity, can you detect any waves or irregularities in the finished surfaces of the glass that might indicate where it was re-polished after the original grinding?

[Harold_4074]

Is there a reason that it should be easier to focus the larger format 8x10 vs 4x5? This is perplexing and doesnt make much sense to me.

It is a long way (neurophysiologically) between the eye (optics) and the mind (images); you might try masking off all but the central 4x5 area on the 8x10 groundglass, and see if you can still focus easily. It seems possible that because of the larger image on 8x10 (assuming the same object--image distance) it just seems easier to decide on good focus; if you are framing the same image in both formats, then the distances will be different, and the perception of best focus may well be different.

I encountered something similar (but in reverse) when I put a long Velostigmat II on a 6x6 camera; on 4x5, focusing was pretty subjective, because a lot of the field was soft and the catchlights were quite small, but on 6x6, only the sharper central area was being used, and focusing seemed simple and clean.

(For an entertaining look at how strongly the nervous system affects our perception of images, you might go to http://cvcl.mit.edu/ and look in the "gallery"!)

[George Kara]

Harold Wonderful website - extremely interesting. Mark, yes I have stopped down the image to try and help. I am going to take the camera and lens over to Rod Kuklas at photomark today to see if its just me.

Again, on the 8x10 GG you get this lovely dreamlike image that is stunning. Of course it could be the size of the image that is making the difference, but the image is so blurred and oof on the 4x5 that I cant come close to the 8x10 image.

[Harold_4074]

George,

Do you happen to have a 4x5 reducing back for the 8x10? My guess is that the images are the same in the two formats, and it is your mind that has trouble deciding on "good" focus in the smaller format. If it "goes out of focus" when you mask off the outer part of the 8x10 image, without changing anything else, then it is not an optical problem.

On the other hand, a lens that covers 8x10 will seriously overfill a typical 4x5 camera interior, and I suppose that you could be seeing the image plus all the glare from light scattering off of the inside of the camera. It seems unlikely, but possibly worth a test.

[George Kara]

Problem solved.

I went down to see Photomark and Rod K helped me solve the issue. I was using a cast which is white. The highlights were causing all kinds of aberrations within the lens. This is what was causing the problem. Last night I didnt have any humans to stand in front of the camera so I used the cast as a substitute. Once a human or other item of higher contrast was in the picture, I could focus the lens just fine.

You guys probably already know this, but I didnt even consider it.

Thanks for all of you help.

George

[Jim Galli]

Problem solved.

New problem for you George. You realize that what you see on the screen is not what you will get? The name implies that the lens is non achromatized, or at least partially. I have a Derogy Anachromatique which I believe uses the same principle. It is a double lens unlike your single, more like the series III? In any case it has a reference guage built in that helps you set it for best focus. You focus according to the GG then move to a point on the scale dependent on distance from subject. It's startling how much difference that is, at least with this lens. It's a 15" focus lens and for a subject 2 meters away you change the visual focus about 6 or 7 mm. I have no idea if that equates to anything helpful with your P&S having never had the pleasure of owning one. It is pretty much why the rank and file of generic portraitists and artists of the time hated them. It's also why they named the series IV "Visual Quality". At last what you see was what you got. Sort of like putting a back seat in a Thunderbird. The purists hated it but they sold 100,000 of them instead of the 15,000 when they were only a two seater.

I'll be curious to see what you get. If it were me, (oh how I wish) I would use some cheap ood RC paper as a medium and set up something like a deck of cards all placed at different knowns. Then I would make good notes on exactly where I placed the focus and where it actually changed to. Probably other means to the same idea which is to get a feel for what the lens is doing visual focus vss chemical focus. Best of luck and I'll be anxious to hear how it goes.

[George Kara]

Hi Jim

Thanks much for your excellent advice. I will certainly try this and let you know how it goes. Interesting about the visual quality naming. I would love to know the reason why the film reacts differently vs the image on the ground glass.

Oh I also just mounted that little old projector lens I purchased from you. I have shot a couple of fuji fp 100 shots with it but nothing in which to judge by.

[Jim Galli]

Hi Jim

Thanks much for your excellent advice. I will certainly try this and let you know how it goes. Interesting about the visual quality naming. I would love to know the reason why the film reacts differently vs the image on the ground glass.

Oh I also just mounted that little old projector lens I purchased from you. I have shot a couple of fuji fp 100 shots with it but nothing in which to judge by.


Hope you have some fun with that. The whole idea is to have some fun with this stuff.

[Paul Fitzgerald]

George,

" I would love to know the reason why the film reacts differently vs the image on the ground glass."

I think it's because some lenses spread the image like a rainbow, chromatic abberation, the acheive the soft focus effect. Plain film or wet plates would show the largest spread, modern panchro film the least. Have fun burning some film finding the offset, as Jim mentioned it changes with focus distance. I have a 16" Unar, when converted to soft focus it needs 3/4" / 20mm offset focused at 4 ft., almost none at inf.

[George Kara]

Paul which way does the focus need to be offset?

[Petzval Paul]

Roll the rear standard towards the front. I believe the "semi" in the name means that it isn't fully corrected, which explains the focusing adjustments.

18 inches? Wow, that's some serious glass. I hope you don't mind, but how much was the lens? I missed that auction. It's too big for my camera so I have to pass up the offer but I think it's a great idea! I have a 9 inch P&S which I would part with for anything. Well, 'cept maybe for a 12"...

Best of luck with it and please post some images!

- Paul

[Paul Fitzgerald]

George,

the film needs to be closer than the GG, I just inserted spacers in place of a film holder made from 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, and 1" dowel rod. I guess foam-core strips could work as well. You could always just move the rear standard forward but I forget where I started and get confused. :D

Remember to keep notes because it is different for each focus distance. Modern panchro film will eliminate most of the offset, it's much more of a problem for plain, blue sensitive film.

Have fun with the new toy.

[seven]

Paul - isn't it vice versa ? old emulsions are 'blind' to anything but blue, so they don't see the other rays which are not focused ?
a quotation form wikipedia :
"Photographic lenses and equipment are designed around the film to be used. The earliest lenses needed to focus blue light only. The introduction of orthochromatic film required the spectrum from green to blue to be brought to the same focus. With the introduction of panchromatic film the whole visual spectrum needed to be brought to the same focus."

[Paul Fitzgerald]

seven,

"Paul - isn't it vice versa ? old emulsions are 'blind' to anything but blue, so they don't see the other rays which are not focused ?"

kinda, sorta, almost, maybe. Human vision is centered on the green portion so there is where we focus the camera, plain film only sees the UV and blue which is closer to the lens, IR is farther from the lens. With modern panchromatic films, what we see is usually what we get, fringing in both directions with color or soft-focus with B&W.

[George Kara]

Thank you Paul. Ill give this a shot with foam core.

[cowanw]

I believe that there is some thought that this is the explanation for Julia Cameron's famed out of focus technique. There was an understanding at the time that a photographer needed to understand that there was a need to focus for the blue light. Which requred an understanding that this was not what was seen on the GG.
If it is true that Mrs Cameron failed to understand this technical point (or rejected it) that might explain her debate with other photographer's of the time.

This does not explain your inability to focus something on your ground glass.

I have found it helped me to start to understand the focusing of the Verito if I had a bit of sharp edged gold or silver chain at the point I wanted to practice focusing on. The specular highlights made the focus point even more distinct.
I expect this is advice you do not need, but others may find it helpful.
Regards
Bill