Lens Review: Goerz Dagor 19" (480mm) f/7.7

[jurgenestanislao]

Reaching out to the forum to see if anybody has used this lens and in case would appreciate it if you could share experiences and sample pictures taken with it.

I know it has good coverage and will definitely cover my 14x17 camera.

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[sanking]

A 19" Goerz Dagor will easily cover 20X24" so you will have a ton of coverage with your 14X17" camera. Dagor lenses have only four air-to-glass surfaces and give good contrast even when un-coated, but coated ones give even better contrast. Many older Dagor lenses show longitudinal chromatic aberration, which means that Blue, Green and Red light focus at a different distance. The effects of CA can be minimized by the use of a orange filter, which will in many cases give better sharpness. In most cases you would want to stop down the lens 3-4 stops from maximum aperture to get optimum sharpness, and at that point a Dagor is capable of good results on an ULF camera such as 14X17 or 20X24.

Sandy

[DolphinDan]

Hi Jurgen,

I have an uncoated version of this lens, which I have used on my 8x10 and 16x20 cameras.

I photographed some Sycamore trees using my 16x20 camera, this lens, my Nikon NIKKOR-M 450mm f9 lens, and some B&W film (Efke 25 or Ilford DELTA 100, I cannot recall offhand). I stopped the lenses down to f45 to get adequate depth of field (1 of the surprises about ultra large format is the incredibly shallow depth of field, even by large format standards). I got the film developed and contact printed. Aside from the slight difference in focal length, you cannot tell the difference between the prints made from these 2 lenses. I do not have any scans of the film at the moment (I have a stack of film that needs scanning).

I also photographed an overcast snowy landscape scene using my 8x10 camera, this lens, a coated RED DOT ARTAR 19" f11 lens, a Nikon APO-NIKKOR 480mm f9 lens, a Nikon NIKKOR-M 450mm f9 lens, and Fuji VELVIA 100. The VELVIA slides shot with this DAGOR were disappointing compared to the other 3 lenses. The DAGOR slide was noticeably lacking in contrast. The other 3 lenses produced fairly close slides in terms of resolution and contrast.

So my suggestion is either get a coated version of this lens or else use this lens for black & white film only.

To summarize: stopped down to around f45, this lens covers 16x20 (which means it will cover 14x17). Uncoated versions of this lens are great for B&W, not so good for color film.

Hope this helps.

Daniel

[ridax]

That's my main lens for 8x10" (the coverage is excessive). Stop it down at least to f/10 for the better background blur. With considerable movements, stop it at least to f/22 for better field sharpness. With an uncoated one (like mine), use a good lens hood for higher contrast. At f/45 the out of focus background rendition is already worse than at f/10 to f/32, but is still good.

As for any excessive chromatic aberration, I didn't see it at all in Dagors, including my 480mm one. Though their single cells surely need filters to cut the CA off (half-480 makes a 840mm that isn't that sharp but usable at small f-stops and with even better OOF background then the complete Dagor).

Another longer focus option is using a -0,5D supplementary lens on the front of the 480mm Dagor; this gives a circa 620mm combination with acceptable (and much better then the Half-Dagor's) sharpness and a pretty good OOF rendition - again, at small f-stops of course.

[ridax]

And for color film, any Dagor except an MC one needs a UV-blocking filter - a real one like Wratten 2b, not a fake piece of glass with a "UV" tag. Dagor's glasses are exceptionally transparent in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum (and that makes Dagors really nice for blue-sensitive film by the way)