Conley Series III 10 inch - Petzval (I think???)

[Kimberly Anderson]

So I got the Century 7 all rigged up this morning and shot some test shots with the Conley 10 inch (f 3.8).

When I disassembled and cleaned it up I thought I was seeing the Petzval construction everyone has talked about. But, when I focused on the GG I didn't see any of the swirly-magic that we have seen from these. In fact, it looked pretty standard.

I shot some 8x10 with it, some TMY and some HDPP (Harmon Direct Positive Paper). I will process the HDPP today and the TMY tomorrow.

I guess I was expecting to see some sort of swirl somewhere, but honestly I am not seeing any.

Thoughts?

I will post a pic after I process.

[Louis Pacilla]

How close where you focusing? Was it like portrait distance? you'll get some swill if you focus at infinity on 8x10 w/ a 10 Petzal.

I would ask why you want this. But it may be fruitless .

[Kimberly Anderson]

Portrait-ish distance. Negs look good, paper looks good. None of that swirly goodness though. I'm a bit surprised.

This lens does have a diffusion control though, but the knob is broken off. Since the background looks pretty standard I am guessing that the diffusion must be set on 0. I'm going to get that fixed and do some more playing/testing.

[Mark Sawyer]

The lens is almost certainly a re-branded Wollensak Vitax, which is a Petzval design. It will swirl, but only under the right conditions. A busy background with lost of bright specular highlights will show it best. Try shooting a few full-body portraits (so you don't get too large an image circle by focusing close; swirl happens at the outer edges of the image circle) under trees with the sky showing through the leaves, and of course, work with the aperture wide open.

[Kimberly Anderson]

Will do! :)

[goamules]

It's really interesting when someone wants swirls, which are an aberration which was to be avoided at all costs in the old days. These portrait lenses were NOT designed to have coma and a distracting, spinning kaleidoscopic background. It's something that can be coaxed out some lens designs, especially petzvals. But if every time you looked at the ground glass through a pezval you had severe aberrations, Joseph Petzval would have called the design and failure and gone back to the drawing board. The swirl was acknowledged as the only downside for a very fast, very sharp lens design, and it was recommended to use only the center part of the coverage to avoid it.

I totally understand today's change. When every cell phone and point and shoot takes perfect, flat, error free shots, it's great fun to see how "bad" a shot we can make with the old lenses! And each photographer want's something different, so thankfully we have options with the old brass lenses.

The paradoxes are interesting. With 35mm, most like a smooth, unobtrusive bokeh. Contrarily, some LFers want bokeh swirls to be the focus of the picture.
35mm folks spend big bucks getting the sharpest lens they can for a TINY negative with low resolution. LFs spend big bucks for a very soft, simple lens for a giant negative with inherent high resolution.

[CCHarrison]

1910 Sears Catalogue

And yes I agree its a Wolly Vitax

Dan

[Emil Schildt]

Michael: when I want swirl I kind of think backwards:

First I choose a background (as Mark was describing).
Then I un-focus on this bit by bit, to the point of maximum swirl.

first then I make my model stand in front of the camera - and having she/he movind slowly back or foreward I then see, where the sharpness is for the portrait.

then take the picture...

If you do the normak thing, the swirl/no swirl will be a lucky shot....

Have fun - it is!

[Kimberly Anderson]

Gandolfi, that is an interesting way to approach this. Huh.....I am thinking about this quite differently now. I will play around with it this weekend. Today is booked with showing the large camera collection to a potential buy-it-all-at-once guy this morning. Then I'm cleaning out the chemicals from his darkroom and move it all to my house. My lens playing time is limited today. Tomorrow it's all mine! :)

[Kimberly Anderson]

I've stripped this lens down today and was amazed at how clean the glass ended up being. Truly amazing. I got the rear floating element sleeve to move very freely, cleaned up the rotating knob mechanism and have the shaft with the broken screw in it out to take to a machinist this week.

The floating element can move freely now, and I can slide that element in it's adjusting sleeve forward and backward just by tipping and shaking the lens. I have a question about this lens (and the Vitax that it truly is). At what position is the diffusion the greatest? towards the front of the lens or toward the rear. I am going to shoot some portraits tomorrow and try to figure out which way is which.

If anyone knows, that would give me a head start.

Thanks! :)

[Mark Sawyer]

I just double-checked my 13.5 inch Vitax: the 0 (sharp) setting has the lens at the front position, and dialing it up to 5 ("soft") has it in the rear position. Although shifting the position changes the focal length slightly, when you re-focus, there is very little difference between 0 and 5.

[Kimberly Anderson]

When you say 'very little difference' are you referring to focal length or the diffusion that is offered? Also, I am curious how difficult the mechanism is to move that element forward and back? Is there much resistance? If you saw the mechanism that made it all possible and just how delicate it is, you might not ever want to move it ever again. Ha! Mine was quite gummed up and I can see just how easy it would have been to twist the dial off.

Thanks for checking.

[goamules]

The Vitax "diffusion" adjustment, like the Dallmeyer, is really more of a defocus knob than a true diffusion that causes soft focus. With a true soft focus lens that adds spherical aberration by adjusting the elements, like a Cooke or a Velostigmat, when you maximize the diffusion it is soft, and you cannot refocus to regain sharpness. With the Vitax you can. We've been trying to figure out what the advertised "adding roundness" is all about, but it's probably subtle changes in depth of field. I seldom use it on my Vitaxes, because like you say, it's a weak mechanism. Not to say the Vitax isn't an excellent, sharp, large petzval, with high quality 20th Century glass.

[Mark Sawyer]

When you say 'very little difference' are you referring to focal length or the diffusion that is offered?

I'm referring to the amount of diffussion. The focal length changes enough to throw things visibly out-of-focus, at a distance of 10 feet, the 0 (sharp) setting is about 3/4 of an inch shorter. One thing I did notice is that when going from 0 to 5, the field curvature increases from 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch (center to corner). I'm not sure if this is part of the "roundness" that Wollensak and others often refered to in writing about Petzvals.


Also, I am curious how difficult the mechanism is to move that element forward and back? Is there much resistance? If you saw the mechanism that made it all possible and just how delicate it is, you might not ever want to move it ever again. Ha! Mine was quite gummed up and I can see just how easy it would have been to twist the dial off.

I have two Vitax's and they both move with very little resistance. But I also have an Ilex-Acme Portrait that's a copy of the Vitax, and it's a bit stiff. I think it's partially that it's sealed tightly enough that you need to let the air-pressure equalize as the elements move.

One of these days, I'll find myself with access to a studio, and I'll put these through their paces! :)

[Kimberly Anderson]

Oh I shot six portraits tonight and I am totally excited to process tomorrow. Shot 'em close up and the gooey-ness was visible in the portraits. I am very excited to see how these turn out.

I lit with two 1000w halogens passed through a silk panel on one side and a reflector on the other. Some very nice light, but not nearly bright enough. I will need to push 2 stops when processing.

Next step is to tame this damn Packard. It is extremely unreliable and jammed up many times tonight. Thank heaven's for the Gordon Coale post where I could see how to reassemble the shutter leaves when it got all bunged up. This shutter may be on it's way out.

Thanks for all the info. In the end I can't say that I even remember which way the 'diffusion' was set. From what I saw I would guess that it was pretty soft. BTW, with that lens you also have the possibility if you remove the adjusting mechanism to place the rear element even more towards the rear cell than the knob will allow.

[premortho]

I know very little about Conley lenses, but I know something about Packard shutters as I've been using them for 60 years. While my best one I've used for 45 years with no problems, the other two have given me fits until I took them apart and cleaned the barely visible rust out of the shutter case and waxed the inside of the case with lemon pledge wax. By the way, the rigidity of the bulb hose effects the instantanous speed. Speed with a good bulb and short stiff hose is +- 1/32. the smaller the bulb and more flexible the hose can slow it down tom 1/15.:mad:

[goamules]

I know very little about Conley lenses, but I know something about Packard shutters as I've been using them for 60 years. While my best one I've used for 45 years with no problems, the other two have given me fits until I took them apart and cleaned the barely visible rust out of the shutter case and waxed the inside of the case with lemon pledge wax. By the way, the rigidity of the bulb hose effects the instantanous speed. Speed with a good bulb and short stiff hose is +- 1/32. the smaller the bulb and more flexible the hose can slow it down tom 1/15.:mad:

Thanks for the reminder and what a great usage history! A few of my packards are cantankerous, but I always figured if I cleaned them up they'd work fine.

[premortho]

Thanks for the reminder and what a great usage history! A few of my packards are cantankerous, but I always figured if I cleaned them up they'd work fine.

And thank you for the kind words. I think that there is a mini-tutorial by Jim Galli on here somewhere on how to "tune up" a Packard shutter. That's where I got the lemon pledge idea. I was 15 years old when I found my Ansco 5X7 with a Packard shutter---that was 60 years ago. Once you get used to it, it simplifies Matters a lot. I went to LF to get away from grain. Which is why I use the slowest Orthochromatic film I can find. I do mostly still lifes and landscapes. If you want to use Ortho film for indoor still lifes, use either blue photofloods or blue flash bulbs. I have found that Ortho film has less grain than panchro, and developement is SO much easier.;)

[Kimberly Anderson]

Where is this Jim Galli tutorial? I have searched...believe me I've searched.

I am going to disassemble the shutter and do as you have suggested. I can see that the blades have been 'messed with' a bit in the past. I wonder if Packard will sell parts? How critical is it that the shutter case is perfectly flat/straight? I am assuming that any little thing that can cause the blades to hang would be a problem.

Your suggestions give me a great place to start, so thank you very much!

[Louis Pacilla]

Where is this Jim Galli tutorial? I have searched...believe me I've searched.

I am going to disassemble the shutter and do as you have suggested. I can see that the blades have been 'messed with' a bit in the past. I wonder if Packard will sell parts? How critical is it that the shutter case is perfectly flat/straight? I am assuming that any little thing that can cause the blades to hang would be a problem.

Your suggestions give me a great place to start, so thank you very much!

Hey Micheal

You should be able to take your Packard shutter apart and clean the blades with paper towel sprayed with Windex but do not soak the blades in anything. Simply wipe with damp cloth and then dry off ,

Clean off brass tube pump and inner cylinder with a little spray lube and 0000 steel wool . Now clean the lube off the pump and cylinder with (Wndex) .

Now take a little spray lube and steel wool and clean the inner casing.Then clean and dry off the lube and rust that you cleaned off with the sleet wool.

to finish you may want to wax or I spray dry lube on the inside of the casing.

BTW-There are rubber bumpers in the lower corner of the casing. Sometimes these need to be glued back in position if not they come lose and hang the blades up. I use a dab of rubber glue. make sure you use a tiny amount and clean any excess off.


Reassemble and test the shutter before you put it back on the lens board. If it runs smoothly then your finished and now put it back on the board and your good to go.If not, then take the shutter apart and try and find what may be hanging the blades or pump. address that hang up, put back together and test. repeat until working smoothly.

As far as Buying replacement parts ( Blades) from Packard Co. You may want to find a used entire shutter from a seller off eBay or put a WTB in the FS section and in no time you'll have a replacement shutter for less then the replacement parts.

[jumanji]

Louis, my Packard is a bit stiff. Should I lubricate it?

[Louis Pacilla]

Louis, my Packard is a bit stiff. Should I lubricate it?

Hi Jumanji

The answer is NO. The Pakard should run dry. The best thing to do is all the steps I just listed. If your shutter is fairly clean then maybe just clean the blades and Pump unit. Never add oil to run shutter.

As I said in my earlier post. Any spray lube i use is simply used to clean rust and dirt off inner casing and to clean the pump w/ 0000 steel wool. But you MUST clean the lube off after using the steel wool. I use a little DRY lube only on the inner casing to allow the blade not to hang up on that inner casing.

One thing I did not add. there are rubber bumpers in the lower corner of the casing. Sometimes these need to be glued back in position. If they come lose that can hang the blades up. I use a dab of rubber glue. make sure you use a tiny amount and clean any excess off.

Hope this helps

[jumanji]

Hi Jumanji

The answer is NO. The Pakard should run dry. The best thing to do is all the steps I just listed. If your shutter is fairly clean then maybe just clean the blades and Pump unit. Never add oil to run shutter.

As I said in my earlier post. Any spray lube i use is simply used to clean rust and dirt off inner casing and to clean the pump w/ 0000 steel wool. But you MUST clean the lube off after using the steel wool. I use a little DRY lube only on the inner casing to allow the blade not to hang up on that inner casing.

One thing I did not add. there are rubber bumpers in the lower corner of the casing. Sometimes these need to be glued back in position. If they come lose that can hang the blades up. I use a dab of rubber glue. make sure you use a tiny amount and clean any excess off.

Hope this helps

Thank you so much for your explain. Now I know what I've got to do.

[Kimberly Anderson]

Here's one of the portraits I shot on Sunday.

http://www.tawayama.com/centuryportraits/abigailcenturyportrait.jpg