Why no new fast,soft focus , portrait lens?

[koppie]

There is currently such a high demand on vintage portrait lens, such as petzval, vitax , verito ...etc.

Can anyone give me a reason, why there are no lens manufacturer make new one for us? I mean there are no hidden formula , no high cost ASPH lens, or even you can leave it uncoated and ask for $1000ish, isn't a good business?

I am puzzled.

[darr]

Cooke Portrait PS945 Lens 229mm, f/4.5 for 4x5 Large Format Photography

http://www.cookeoptics.com/cooke.nsf/products/largeformat.html

[goamules]

"High demand" is relative. Manufacturing just about anything for a profit requires you make enough to recover for tooling and R&D. How many LF shooters worldwide would buy them? 10, 100? That's pretty small numbers to start up even a small batch of hand made lenses.

[John NYC]

"High demand" is relative. Manufacturing just about anything for a profit requires you make enough to recover for tooling and R&D. How many LF shooters worldwide would buy them? 10, 100? That's pretty small numbers to start up even a small batch of hand made lenses.

Yes, I even expect that in the next couple years we'll start seeing the lines of modern LF lenses from Rodenstock and Schneider shrink to maybe just a few offerings each.

I have a 150mm SS XL, I bought used here on this forum. How many of these are sold new a year? I would guess in the hundreds at best. Eventually it will not make sense for Schneider to make another production run of such lenses. Like the 210 SS XL. I would be really surprised if 100 of those sold new each year these days.

[Dan Fromm]

koppie, why don't you take the risk yourself? Find a merchant lens maker -- Elcan, Rodenstock Schneider, Zeiss, maybe Edmund Optics -- that will make lenses to the prescription in the soft-focus lens of your choice, buy a batch, and sell them? Take the prescription from a patent, send out requests for quotations, and see what happens.

If you're not willing to do that, don't try to badger other people into taking the risk for you.

[Ash]

A big reason why the old ones sell for so much is because they're old. People want to feel like they own history.

"If I buy this old lens that might have taken a great photo at one point, maybe I'll take a great photo as well"

or

"That lens looks really cool. My camera/studio/Mac will look great with that on it"

or

"Hey, that's the missing one from my collection"


In fact only a fraction of anything 'antique' is ever sold to a user. I bet on a vast majority of people buy for the collectible value or aesthetics rather than actual use. If a manufacturer made a new lens it wouldn't appeal as an antique lens with a history in the patina.

[jnantz]

koppie

they are easy to make ...
get a copy of primitive photography

[Steven Tribe]

It is just not feasible to make a modern copy of a classic "soft" lens at a price that is below current market rates for the real article. It is only possible if someone ( a person - not an organisation) with both the skills and equipment for brass turning and lens grinding/polishing and is prepared to work for almost nothing. This is even true of comparitively simple "flawed" achromat lenses. The Cooke PS lens is an exception but my sense of logic tells me that this is more an exercise is cultivating the Cooke image rather than a sensible economically viable venture. They have real income/profit from other segments!

When ( or if ever?) reproduction does make economic sense - forgeries of the real articles will start to appear. I don't recall that I have ever heard of a modern forgery?

[Frank Petronio]

Just stick an 85/1.2 or 85/1.4 from Canon, Zeiss, Leica, Contax, Nikon, etc. ~ or a Lens Baby ~ and you get everything a practical portrait photographer would want from a DSLR.... so the only people left using old Brassies on box cameras are the impractical ones.

[jp]

I'd love to build some, but I don't have the time or equipment to do it. Buy out my nonphotography business that provided the means for me enjoy LF, let me be a playboy/mad scientist and it might happen.

Unfortunately, lots of people don't mind spending $2000+ on a lens. Look at all the pro zoom lenses Nikon and Canon sell. When you can get a used lens for $500-1000, it's a comparitively good deal. A business making new SF lenses would ideally (for the business) sell that a price comparable to non-rare but popular soft focus lenses or slightly more because it's NEW. As far as major companies making lenses in low volume, there isn't that much changed in LF that a new lens would have a serious advantage over a 20+ year old used one at substantial discount.

[Oren Grad]

The Cooke PS945 costs $3450. How much are you willing to pay?

[eddie]

why make more new ones when we can buy all we want from ones that have already been made.......?

[Mark Sawyer]

One can buy a newer Tessar for under $100, (say, one of those Russian 300mm f/4.5 Industars), space the front element out a bit, and have a lovely coated soft lens, argueably better than the uncoated Velostigmat Series II (a tessar that achieves its softness the same way), for very little.

And no one would want it.

[Steve Hamley]

Most of them would not fit into the largest shutter currently made. I doubt if you'd sell many barrel lenses.

Cheers, Steve

[Mark Sawyer]

True, but what modern shutter would handle a fast (>f/4.5) lens of 300mm or longer? If you want a fast lens with a focal length appropriate for portraits on 8x10, you're resigned to either barrel lenses or vintage shutters (Compound/Betax/Alphax/Acme).

For 4x5, a number of 180-210mm tessars could have their front element spaced out and fit to a modern Copal shutter. But again, I doubt there'd be much interest.

[goamules]

I'm starting to feel like its a buggy whip manufacturer search.

[Lachlan 717]

True, but what modern shutter would handle a fast (>f/4.5) lens of 300mm or longer? If you want a fast lens with a focal length appropriate for portraits on 8x10, you're resigned to either barrel lenses or vintage shutters (Compound/Betax/Alphax/Acme).


Or a Sinar shutter...

[Steven Tribe]

There was a pretty exhaustive discussion back in Fall/Autumn 2004 under the title "Commissionned new lenses, foolish ? ".

[archer]

Robert Royce will grind you any lens you want if price is no object. Bob is perhaps one of the three greatest lens and mirror makers in the world at this time. He made the conical Newtonian mirror for the telescope I built two years ago and its figure is truly superb. I have taken it to ridiculous extremes and the figure has never broken down. I know that he has made lenses for NASA and does do refracting optics as well as mirror optics. Just Google Robert Royce and check out his web site. He is also one of the nicest people with whom you could do business but he may talk your ear off.
Denise Libby