I have searched, but the plethora of hits on this has left me swimming in a sea of threads that don't answer my question. Even the Vade Mecum has me a little lost. What is the difference between the different series of protars? Are they basically the same? Do they all have supe wide coverage? Are there good series and not so good series protars? thanks, and sorry if I am rehashing a topic.
They are all different, but some are more different than others.
Only the "Series V" has super wide coverage - the German made ones are not marked with a Series designation, only "Weitwinkel-Protar f/18". Sometimes not "Weitwinkel" either.
I've got the full list of designs and differences at home, but I won't be there for almost a month
Some Protars have 2 elements per cell, some three, and some even four. Generally speaking the four-element ones are too complex, and so are prone to poor performance due to slight misalignment. One of the "convertible" series was a four-element, the other one is three-element.
According to one of my books the Protars have remarkably even sharpness over the entire image field, and center sharpness is almost as good as the best Aplanats.
Check out the following catalogs:
http://www.cameraeccentric.com/html/info/zeiss/zeiss.html
http://www.cameraeccentric.com/html/info/protarlinse/protarlinse.html
Protar VII is for general photography with roughly an 80 degree angle of coverage. They usually come in pairs on a shutter. They were individually corrected and make a convertible lens. For instance if you have a VII with 16 1/8" and 13 3/4" individual elements, combined they make an 8 1/2" lens. But you can use either one by itself behind the shutter which makes it a triple convertible. There were a zillion combinations and the catalogs are the best source of info. Thanks to Seth Broder for providing those for us. They were in direct competition with the Goerz Dagor and are every bit as nice. (In spite of what Dagor 77 says :~'))
Protar IV is a wide field lens like a commercial Ektar in coverage.
Protar V is a true wide angle with 110 degree angle.
Neither the IV or the V are convertible.
The other ones are obscure at this point.
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