Gundlach Radar 300mm f/4.5 - Rear element only makes a nice soft-focus lens.

[Corran]

I was messing around with my Gundlach 300mm f/4.5 lens and discovered that the rear element makes a great soft-focus lens. It has a lot of diffusion and spherical aberrations, but still has a sharp core to the image. This is wide-open - stopped down it gets gradually sharper, eventually becoming really quite sharp.

From my calculations, the rear element is approximately a 200mm f/3 or 3.5. I haven't shot anything with it but I will soon. I thought I'd post this so maybe others with this lens can experiment with it as well. That's quite fast for a 200mm of course. I am thinking it will make some nice soft-focus wide angle landscapes on 8x10.

[TheDeardorffGuy]

Its a tessar, all Tessars do this. Even the EKC 4.5 300 Ektar. I've often thought someone at EKC made the Portrait lens from these.

[Corran]

Good to know...I wasn't aware of the design of this lens, nor that characteristic of tessars.

[Corran]

Edit: I mounted it on my 8x10 and the outer edges get really weird but on 4x5 it still works really well.