questions about caltar ii-n lenses

[Bob Salomon]

We're still left with the mystery of why some of the late-production Caltar-labeled Grandagon-N's have green rings while others don't. But this is entirely a bit of academic trivia - it's completely irrelevant to making pictures, for which either type will be excellent.

It got a bit complicated.
Calumet and Cambo had common ownership. The owner also owned Calumet Europe, Fidelity/Lisco/Riteway as well as some other companies.
As a retailer Calumet could not buy their lenses directly through the factory but as a camera manufacturer they could. Accordingly Calumet bought private label lenses under the Caltar label as well as Rodenstock branded lenses. The contract stipulated that they could not offer the Rodenstock branded lenses unless they were bundled with Cambo cameras and the selling price of the lenses had to match the selling prices of the country’s authorized distributor.
Calumet continuously violated this agreement by selling the Rodenstock branded lenses without a bundled camera and at prices other dealers could not match.
The factory started to pressure Calumet over these violations and eventually stopped selling Rodenstock branded lenses to them.
This all came to a head as Calumet was running into financial problems in the states and they became unable to meet their contractual obligations for private label. So supplies of some more current lens versions became scarcer.

[Vaughn]

I paired and bought new a Calumet-branded Gowland PocketView and a Caltar IIN 150/5.6 in the early 80s. The lens was 10 or 20 bucks more than the camera...about $450 total. Both still serve me well, tho I normally use larger formats.

[nbagno]

Interesting that this topic popped up. I was looking for a 90mm Caltar and just happened to find one used at Adorama. It’s a Caltar II-N 90 4.5 MC . I’ll post when I can see the lens band color. Condition was makked as “E” and the price was $229. From what I found, that seemed like a great price. Deal or do they know something I don’t?


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[CatSplat]

Bob, Caltar II-N plasmats with serial numbers from the Apo-Sironar-N era have the newer typeface but not the silver ring. At least that's true of the ones I own (150 mm and 300 mm), and I can't recall ever seeing a Caltar II-N plasmat with the ring elsewhere either. I'm happy to be corrected if someone can show an example that proves otherwise.

EDIT: A quick survey of what's currently up on eBay shows late 90/6.8 Caltar II-N (Grandagon-N) with the green ring as well as without. There's a late 150 and a late 210, neither of which has the silver ring.

EDIT 2: Adding completed listings to the survey turned up another late 90/6.8 Caltar II-N with green ring, and a late 240 Caltar II-N without silver ring.

Lens Trivia R Us!

There certainly seems to be some overlaps in serials for ringed vs non-ringed Caltars and Rodenstocks. I also took a gander at eBay and found a 90/4.5 Grandagon-N serial 11695xxx (~2001) with no green ring.. and yet the same lens with serial 11567xxx (~1999) has the green stripe! There must have been some production batches that overlapped.

At any rate, the switch looks to have taken place gradually in the mid-late 90s. My Caltar 90/6.8 has no green ring and a serial of 11255xxx (1994 production) and the earliest green-ring version I could find was serial 11383xxx (1996 production). Didn't find any overlap for that particular model in my brief search but I'm sure it probably happened to some extent.

Interesting that this topic popped up. I was looking for a 90mm Caltar and just happened to find one used at Adorama. It’s a Caltar II-N 90 4.5 MC . I’ll post when I can see the lens band color. Condition was makked as “E” and the price was $229. From what I found, that seemed like a great price. Deal or do they know something I don’t?


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Sounds like a good deal to me, assuming the condition assessment is accurate! Don't put any stock in the band colour (or lack thereof), the colour was just to make them stand out and easy to spot a particular lens in your bag - they didn't change the optics when the bands were introduced.