Roger Hesketh
16-Dec-2012, 21:00
Their was a lens on Ebay the other day amongst a bunch of other lenses a Steinheil Doppelanastigmat Unofocal. I was not familiar with the lens so I looked it up in the 1920's Steinheil catalogue on the Cameraeccentric website.
http://www.cameraeccentric.com/html/info/steinheil_3.html
It would appear that the lens is a dialyte design similar to a Cooke Aviar an anastigmat but convertible the front or back components are achromatic yielding approximately twice the focal length of the complete lens. The catalogue suggests that the single components be used for soft focus portraiture at wide stops but that at small stops converted it makes a good group or landscape lens.
I made a too cheeky very low bid on that group of lenses and missed out but was sufficiently intrigued by the possibilities of this lens to find myself pressing the buy it now button on a 9x12 German folder which sported a similar lens later on that evening. Item number 160939141206.
Obviously I do not have the camera to hand yet. I would be interested to hear of the experiences of others with this or similar lenses used converted this way. I suppose it is too much to hope that it perform in a similar way to a Verito.
Thanks in advance.
Roger
http://www.cameraeccentric.com/html/info/steinheil_3.html
It would appear that the lens is a dialyte design similar to a Cooke Aviar an anastigmat but convertible the front or back components are achromatic yielding approximately twice the focal length of the complete lens. The catalogue suggests that the single components be used for soft focus portraiture at wide stops but that at small stops converted it makes a good group or landscape lens.
I made a too cheeky very low bid on that group of lenses and missed out but was sufficiently intrigued by the possibilities of this lens to find myself pressing the buy it now button on a 9x12 German folder which sported a similar lens later on that evening. Item number 160939141206.
Obviously I do not have the camera to hand yet. I would be interested to hear of the experiences of others with this or similar lenses used converted this way. I suppose it is too much to hope that it perform in a similar way to a Verito.
Thanks in advance.
Roger