Korona View 4x5, Zeiss Tessar @ 4.5, Packard shutter.
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A friend generously gave me his Industar-37 300mm f4.5 lens this week (he decided he wasn't going to build a camera for it) and this is a first try with it. My understanding is that there wasn't a lot of quality control in the manufacture of these Russian Tessars, but it seems I got a decent copy: its sharp where I focused it and the OOF areas render nicely. (This was done at f5.6 FYI, 7 seconds exposure)
Shot on 8x10 Ilford HP5+ processed in Xtol stock.
See it larger here: Industar37
Thanks, glad you like it.
As regards the Industar37; my understanding is that there is quite a bit of variability among them in terms of quality. I don’t know how true this is, but I’ve had one person tell me they acquired one and found it was rubbish. I had no intentions of getting one of these but a friend said to me recently that he’d decided he wasn’t going to proceed with his plans to build a camera for it and offered it to me, so I accepted his offer.
I’ve done no side by side comparisons with any of my other lenses - I suppose I could compare it with my 10” Kodak Anastigmat and my 12” Kodak Ektar f4.5 and see how they relate. I gather that the Industar is a Tessar in design. It is a coated lens (appears to have coatings on the front and rear of the front group), but it still exhibits some flare without shading the lens under flare-inducing conditions,so you’ll need to pay attention to that. I can’t tell you exactly what it’s image circle is, but it more than covers 8x10 at infinity. My Industar has about fifteen aperture blades which makes for very clean bokeh I expect (haven’t used it to test that yet), so in all, I am pleasantly surprised by its performance. You could do far worse in seeking out a “normal” lens for 8x10. Be aware, of course, this is a barrel lens (no shutter) so for some folks this presents a usability problem.
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