Which are the fancy lenses??

[Lachlan 717]

The 80mm SSXL is not a particularly good lens, and is far from “fancy” or “highly desirable”.

[Bernice Loui]

Been there done this. 14" Goerz Blue Dot Trigor in barrel. Trounced the 360mm f5.6 Rodenstock Sironar N in resolution with better contrast and overall remarkable image circle and very low geometric distortion. Also trounced the Hasselblad 100mm f3.5 planar.. and this is a process lens.. Heh..

The other Goerz wonder lens, 6" f5.6 Magnar II.


Bernice

Agree with the 14" Blue Dot Trigor - had one of these for awhile...latest edition Kern version in #3 Copal - amazing! Tested by taping strips of 35mm Agfapan 25 to center and edges of 11x14 holder - negs appeared very similar to those of my Mandler edition (late 1970's) version 2 50mm Leica Summicron-M. Could not believe this! Flat field, great coverage...versatile enough for all formats through 11x14. Why...oh why - did I ever part with that lens?

[Bernice Loui]

IMO, APO Lanthar is over rated. Essentially German marketing moniker for a lens that used low dispersion Lanthanum glass invented in the US of A circa WW-II. Lanthanum glass was used in LOTs of Kodak Ektar lenses,, Kodak made not a lot of hype about this.

Had a Zeiss APO planar process lens. Very low contrast and LOTs of flare due to excessive number of uncoated surfaces in a Gauss design.
Zeiss made these for a short time due to poor optical performance.

14" Goerz Trigor... kinda special.

Goerz Hypergon.. more of a collector special than good performance optic. The fan was spun during exposure to compensate for light fall-off.
Majority of these have no fan as they were fragile and often damaged then lost-discarded.


Bernice

"Fancy lenses" conjures up in my mind memories of lenses that I have come across but in the end couldn't afford to acquire them:
Set of "mint" 150mm, 210mm, and 300mm Voigtlander-TECHNIKA-Apo Lanthars in shutters. Seller wouldn't split up the set.
14" Goerz Blue Dot Trigor mounted in a Copal shutter. My bid was high, but was outbid seconds before the auction ended.
800mm Zeiss Apo Planar from Lens & Repro. Stu? sold the lens days before I called him. Was advertised in VIEWCAMERA magazine. Ad in VIEWCAMERA listed no price just "CALL".
200mm (or there about) Hypergon with the front spinner fan. Someone else offered a whole lot more than I did for that optic.

Fancy lens that I did acquire:One high speed prototype Zeiss optic I did acquire in the early 1990s for pennies. Donated it to the Zeiss Historical Society.

Fancy lens that I have always wanted:On page 127 of my 1962 B&J catalog (attached image). Can make out that it is a COOKE TELEPHOTO. Doesn't seem to have a focusing mechanism. Saw it 20 years later when I used a Hass on a regular basis.

[John Kasaian]

What about Pretzel lenses?
And those illusive Cooke Triple Convertibles?

[Fr. Mark]

Or we could sort of go the opposite direction: lenses repurposed for LF, i.e. close-up "filters" or positive meniscus lenses, perhaps with Waterhouse stops, old projector lenses, some are Cooke triplets, some may be Petzvals, some may be other things depending on the era. I have two process lenses I need to get re-mounted and see what they can do, too. One of my favorite portraits was taken with an 18" Cooke Triplet projector lens stopped down from f3.6 to f8 or 11, on 8x10 x-ray film (the subject was a retired radiologist!) in a sliding box camera. The "close up filters" can give you a bunch of focal lengths in a cheap, super light weight package. The usual pack is 1, 2, 4 diopters which is 1000 mm, 500 mm, and 250 mm. That's on the long side for 4x5 (but not crazy for 8x10 or ULF) and by combing the lenses you can get 3 diopters 333 mm, 5 diopters, 200 mm, 6 diopters or 166 mm, or 7 diopters, 143 mm. I've never shot them combined, but I have tried to do a comparison to the 210mm plasmat v. 250 meniscus. There's less sharpness, even stopped down, and less contrast. But some like the look.

[LabRat]

I have found the saving grace of old uncoated, plain lenses is that some new B/W films have a long toe, so a lens with lower contrast seems to match this, and with color films with excessive saturation, these can help tame it... So these can be useful tools, and matched to different materials...

So for lens selection, I think the question of "what" lens could be asked "why" this lens...

Steve K

[gary mulder]

Almost all large format gear was made for and sold to professionals. That’s the reason why nowadays there is a large supply heavy bulky monorail cameras. Most of the time they were carried by assistants. A amateur now is interested in light, small and easy to carry cameras and compact lenses. Small lenses were never a great interrest for professionals. So there are not many made. Plain economics of demand and supply dictate prices. Heavy bulky sironar f 5,6 240mm no problem. A fujinon-A f 9 240mm on the other hand…..

[Corran]

Disagree with Bernice. The APO Lanthars have a certain strange property I don't quite understand - they seem to make the shadow areas really open and airy, kind of like Steve mentions with older lenses above, but retain a good contrast throughout the image rather than the haziness I tend to dislike about older uncoated or just lower contrast lenses. Oh and they are really sharp at wider apertures as well as stopped down. I certainly am not selling mine...and would love to find a 30cm one to round out my collection. Oh well, that's not likely to happen! I need to get my 21cm onto my 5x7...

[John Layton]

I think part of the lesson here is "ya gotta see for yourself!"

Part of the problem here...objectively speaking, is knowing where the optical baseline should be for some of these "venerable" older lenses - to know that a given example is truly up to snuff.

Would be wonderful...if there existed a "lens library," of critically pre-tested examples of lenses (voted in by library members?) which could be loaned or rented out, so those of us who want to try them out could truly know their capabilities...assuming we had the wherewithal with our own technique to do them justice! (yet another caveat!)

[Dan Fromm]

Goerz Hypergon.. more of a collector special than good performance optic. The fan was spun during exposure to compensate for light fall-off.
Majority of these have no fan as they were fragile and often damaged then lost-discarded.

I think you're mistaken. There were two versions of the Hypergon. 140 degree lens with fan (mechanical center filter!) and a later 110 degree lens without fan. The use of the same trade name for two different lenses has confused many.