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I own an Ernemann lens (front & rear cells, no shutter) which is in optically very good condition but I don't know what to do with it. It is 190mm, f6.8. The lettering includes the following: SPECIAL, No. RI 698. The cells came from a useless Copal #1 that I acquired somewhere along the line. Does anybody know anything about the lens? Is it worth anything?
Ernemann made some very fine lenses, some of them (the fast ones @F1.8) are very expensive nowadays - google a little.
I've never heard of or seen a 190mm F6.8, the biggest i know is 180mm F2.7. You should take a few pictures with it and show them here :) I'm sure it is a very nice and sharp lens.
Here is a pic. It truly does seem to be a mystery lens.
The lettering looks way too modern?
I wonder if that's another B&J ripoff of a well respected name, as "Carl Meyer" was of Hugo Meyer and Carl Zeiss? It has that look, and I've seen similar "RI" prefixed serials on other B&J stuff.
Might be. It certainly is no German made Ernemann photographic lens, as the inscription is wrong - for the short period between the design of the DIN engraving typeface and the absorption of Ernemann into Zeiss a few years later they had a very distinctive typeface with a €-like E to their name.
There also is a entirely separate cine projector branch of Ernemann starting in 1920, which still exists - so it might be something off that line. But it would be strangely slow for that purpose - even f/4 is slow for a projection lens. And the coverage of projection lenses is so small that there would be no point in shutter-mounting any of them...
I'm about 99.98% certain it's a B&J. Black anodised, instead of black lacquer.