OK, what lens was it?

**Jim Galli** · 1-May-2013, 08:53

http://www.shorpy.com/node/15191?size=_original#caption

Cheap acromatic meniscus on an old folder? The circles up in the highlights in the trees are weird. Looks like an Aero Ektar but there are a thousand reasons why it isn't. So what was it?

**Jason Greenberg Motamedi** · 1-May-2013, 09:05

Or perhaps a Periskop-type lens? They can produce those circles.

**Jon Shiu** · 1-May-2013, 09:27

Could be from a box camera. Oh, I see it was from a professional studio, so probably not.

Jon

jp · 1-May-2013, 09:35

The shape of the circles make it appear to be overcorrected for spherical aberation. Probably not a cheap meniscus (which I'd think would be more likely uncorrected), but some other cheap lens.

**Mark Sawyer** · 1-May-2013, 09:35

Harris & Ewing was a huge studio/news media outlet with a lot of employees, (http://www.bizjournals.com/washingto...13/focus8.html). By that I'd say it was probably a fairly decent camera and lens. The only tell-tale I can pick up on is that hard bright line at the edge of the out-of-focus specular highlights, kinda like the Aero Ektar, but the bright line here is at the outside edge (farthest from the center of the image), where with the AE that bright edge goes all the way 'round with a little more brightness on the inside edge.

Definitely not a meniscus, which would have had significant coma at the outer areas with such an open aperture.

**Jim Galli** · 1-May-2013, 10:25

It's not really sharp anywhere. So I thought maybe VPK, but then I looked and it says it's a glass negative. A curious one.

jp · 1-May-2013, 10:30

All the little black specs indicate it's a glass negative. The emulsion was fragile or poorly taken care of.

**Petzval Paul** · 1-May-2013, 10:52

I have a very early rolleicord with a Zeiss triotar that produces a similar image. I believe that there were many triplets like that used on a lot of contemporary folding cameras and such.

**Bill_1856** · 1-May-2013, 11:41

Rapid Rectilinear. Ain't it beautiful!!!

**Ole Tjugen** · 1-May-2013, 11:49

I don't think that's an RR - it isn't sharp enough!

I woudl guess at a triplet, or maybe HALF an RR?

On the other hand, it looks to me like the aperture is too large for a half RR. So I'll go for triplet, or F:3.5 Tessar (Zeiis had a habit of overcorrecting aberrations at times).