Mystery Dagor...

[linhofbiker]

In my search for a "good" old lens for watercolor reproduction I tried a "Berlin" Dagor which was pretty accurate. Then, about twenty years ago I came across a set of Zeiss Protarlinses with 2 41cm, 1 35cm, 1 29cm and 1 22cm cells in a compound shutter. A was using a very old 5x7 Linhof Kardan with 4x5 back to make watercolor copies. After much trial and error I had settled on using Fuji 64T with two tungsten broad lights (rated at 3100K) shooting late at night when there was no other light source. Then I tried the Protarlinses in several combinations and took several 64T slides. When compared with an old Symmar 135 the colors of the Protarlinse where not as accurate, particularly in the blue/green range. This was according to the color expert, the watercolor artist. I gave up further search of the "classics" and settled on a more modern Componon-S 135 in a shutter. This lens was used for about 15 years until the artist (my wife) retired from her watercolor portrait business. I have several hundred 64T transparencies of her work, many of which have been used to make "giclee" copies of the original watercolor painting. The artist printer preferred working with my transparencies than making his own 4x5 digital copies of the original painting using his expensive back on the enlarger.

So Dagor's and even Zeiss Protarlinse's have their followers, but for my particular purpose the Plasmat (in enlarging configuration), i.e. the Componon-S was better for reproducing the fine colors of a watercolor painting.

[Jim Galli]

I think the Voigtlaender Collinear had a 6.8 series that was 3 - 3 and very different from Dagor. I never liked them much. And of course lots of folks paid the license royalty and made Dagor type lenses. I have at least 2 mystery no name 3-3 lenses. Any of them were a great improvement over the more common at the time Rapid Rectilinear. Gundlach made some 3 - 3 lenses that were just RR's with a bit of extra glass. Rapid Rectigraphic. It quite literally could be anything. I'll bet it can take some pictures though if you put it on a camera. The Earliest Dagor's had a distinctive shape and machining that is very recognizable. The glass was set in them so they looked sort of bug-eyed.