heliar alternatives?

[Lightbender]

Heliars have a certain fanatic legendary status about them.
And the prices seem to be quite incendiary.
But do they really desrerve that cult status?

-And if they do have a 'magic' quality that makes you images sparkle, are their any less-expensive alternatives?

[karl french]

Really?, Heliars seem really cheap now. $500 or less for a 36cm Heliar. $200 or less for a 24cm Heliar in barrel.

Otherwise buy a Tessar.

[jesse]

Dallmeyer Pentac is a Heliar design, sometimes you may find a cheap one on eBay.

[Steven Tribe]

The real Heliars (black and original optical design) are, as Karl mentioned, very reasonable. Post-war, coated and in large shutters do appear to be expensive.

[jesse]

The later one had been re-design, larger diameter in front group and smaller in rear group.

[mdarnton]

I'm with Karl on Tessars. I have one "real" Heliar, but have been stocking up on Tessars because they're cheap and under-appreciated.

[Ken Lee]

Heliar images don't sparkle, but contain uncorrected aberrations which disappear as soon as we close down a few stops. Once stopped down they are quite sharp.

Once we go past f/8 it's very hard to see big differences between LF lenses except for fairly modest shifts in contrast, resolution and color rendition which can usually be corrected with a few mouse-clicks. Of course, different designs offer different circles of coverage, but here we're talking about "magic"

See this comparison of 150mm lenses and this one of 210-240mm lenses.

Note that in my tests, the Heliar lenses exhibited focus-shift. They should have been re-focused after stopping down, but I no longer own them so can't redo the test.

[DrTang]

why bother..save up and get the real artifact!!!

I've been messing with a ton of lenses last year or so and .. dang it.. nothing beats the heliar - for the kind of stuff I want to do anyway

now...if I wanted a grittier and sharper pix..no..I would be getting something else and probably way more recent

but if you want to take 'those kind' of photos... buy a Heliar...you will not be disappointed

[EdSawyer]

Pentac is a good choice, as mentioned. the 8" f/2.9 being the one that most people use.

[cowanw]

Or look for a Dynar and know you are getting an f6 Heliar.