Posting this here partly because I'm a little bit excited about finally getting a copy of my "holy grail" lens, but also because as far as I could find there is no information and no pictures of any of the first generation Symmar lenses. I only know it exists because a few of them show up in Hartmut Thiele's Schneider production lists before production swapped over to the f6.8 Dagor style Symmar. This one is a 240 f5, there are also 60 6.5, 90 4.5, 105 4.5, 105 6.5, 120 4.5, 120 6.5, 135 4.8, 135 6.3, 150 4.8, 150 6.5, 165 4.8, 165 6.5, 180 4.5, 180 4.8, 180 6.5, 210 4.5 and 300 7.7
The f6.8 Dagor style lenses start showing up in October 1919 and this previous series peters out around March 1920, apart from two "one off" 300 f7.7 lenses in October 1920 & March 1921. In the last two year of production there were only 308 of these older Symmars produced, out of 14055 lenses in total, and most of these were the classic medium format lenses - 135, 150, 165 and 180. Most of them were produced in batches of less than 10 and most of those were batches of 1. Extrapolating back from those figures the total number produced of the first Symmars would be around 800 with maybe 10 to 20 of those being the 240 f5. The serial number - 1029 - points to something produced in the first year or two of Schneider's existence but since the production lists only go back to March 1918 and lens number 21602 I can only speculate.
This one is in a sunk mount with f stops marked 5, 6.3, 8, 11, 16, 23, 32. The front and rear cells look to be identical as you would expect from a Doppel Anastigmat but I can't tell how many elements or the construction.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks