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View Full Version : Old tessar lens question



Luke79
16-May-2012, 10:20
Greetings ,

i would like to know if someone ever came across an old tessar 300mm 3.5 lens and can tell me something about its wide open performance and rendering/look

Best Wishes

Luke

Mark Sawyer
16-May-2012, 10:43
I have one (a Carl Zeiss Jena XVI) that I've used for contact print portraits on 8x10. As you'd expect, it's not extremely sharp at the widest aperture, but for contact prints it is fine, seeming as sharp as anything else. The depth of field is very shallow, of course. I never used it at smaller apertures, but would expect it to sharpen up a bit more. I'd say it's a very fine lens for portraits, but has enough of that portrait lens look that it might not be right for other applications, depending on the look you want to bring to the print. It's also a pretty heavy lens, and I've never seen one in a shutter, so while it could be closed down for more conventional landscape and architecture work, there are better choices.

Luke79
16-May-2012, 11:13
thank you very much mark for your explanation, great help so far, yes its a XIV lens about 2,5kg , much glass i think and gold finishing
i was thinking of using it on 8x10 black&white portraits