Steinheil Unifokal 15 cm f:4.5

[Bill_1856]

This was my very first lens (1952), now long gone. It was brand-new, coated, in a beautiful press-Compur shutter.
I've never seen another one listed anywhere, and the Vitae is a little nebulous about it.
Can anyone supply more information? (I've got no good reason to know, it's just always bugged me.)

[Sevo]

I have a 210mm Unofocal, unfortunately with coating damage and scratch marks to the front element, so that it is softer than it should be. Nice lens nonetheless - a dialyte with the slightly odd property of having identical focal lengths on all elements. It was not that rare for a high spec lens (at f/4.5 for many years the fastest lens with a optical performance above Tessar types) in the twenties, and many German makers still offered it with their cameras in the early fifties, but it obviously did not sell that well any more against more affordable lenses with similar or better coverage and resolution (like the Symmar). And Steinheil seem to have pulled out of the large format lens side of their business soon after.

[E. von Hoegh]

Unofokal is on pp5 of the 1925 Steinheil catalog.http://www.cameraeccentric.com/html/info/steinheil_1.html

[Bill_1856]

Thanks, Guys.

[Fotoguy20d]

Want to buy one? How about two? I have one in a dial compur and one in a press compur. The serial numbers are 26000 apart (in the low 500000s) but the text is in very different fonts and the newer one in the press shutter is marked VL for coated. Strangely though, the reflections on the two are identical.

Dan