Hi
I have a few Taylor Hobson lenses including a 158mm VIIb for which I paid approx. £50 ex shutter, when I saw the price this went for I was shocked , does anyone else think this is crazy.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Rare-Taylor-Ho...QQcmdZViewItem
Hi
I have a few Taylor Hobson lenses including a 158mm VIIb for which I paid approx. £50 ex shutter, when I saw the price this went for I was shocked , does anyone else think this is crazy.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Rare-Taylor-Ho...QQcmdZViewItem
Crazy man, but the marketplace does find its level.
With a coverage over 100 degrees, it is a rare lens and a perfect WA lens for 11x14. It might even cover 7x17. Lens and Repro has a 8" WA Ross asking for $1,500. I am not at all surprised at the ending price. WA lenses of 150mm are not hard to find.
Kerry isn't usually noted for wild irrationality. Perhaps he'll chime in. :-)
Some of the single coated British lenses from the 50s-60s are sleepers. The revival of larger sheet film sizes being used in the field is waking them up. Lucky for those with good car boot sales in their area.
Hi again
I had not noticed thet Kerry was the winning bidder so I guess that the price is ok, my only further comment is that I have a 210mm computar in a Copal shutter which covers 11X14 but with no movement for which I paid approx. £300, will the VIIb have greater coverage than this?
I've had a few of these lenses from the smaller 160mm to the 212mm version that Mr Wisner gave hs stamp to and found them all to be very low in contrast, I mean flat ! Good luck to anyone who shoots with that pig.
CP Goerz
I have 3. 158mm 200mm and 222mm. I've used the 6 1/4" the most. I would note mixed results. For low contrast scenes it has a fine sharp look but with a very bright scene it flares badly in the center. It is a lens that would take on an entire new personality with even single coatings. I'll be interested to follow Kerry's findings. Both my 6 1/4 and my 8 3/4 have had the flare problem. Who could you send these to for a modern coating?
Hi Jim
unfortunately in the UK we do not have an equivelent to S K Grimes for shutter mounting of barrell lenses, aperture engraving etc., however we do have an excellent re-polishing and coating service, I bought a Computar 210mm on the bay which was a bit cloudy so I sent it to them and had it stripped recemented, repolished and a single layer coating applied to the outer surfaces, the cost was very reasonable and the results are superb, incidentally a few Months ago I conducted a survey on this forum to ascertain how much interest there would be in a modern version of the Cooke 158mm VIIB, this may yet happen, these thing take time (the lens would not be manufactured by Cooke).
Here is a link to Optical Instruments (Balham) Ltd.
http://www.optil.co.uk/
Best wishes
Excellent resource, thank you. I will look into it plus I have a WA Dagor that has gone to pieces and is probably worth de-cementing - re-cementing because of the value of the piece. To address your original question I think the VIIb would have some more useful coverage that the 210mm Computar. I believe the Computars are near 90 degrees to the Cooke's 100.
I had a very bad experience with Optical Instruments, and would recommend extreme caution before sending them anything.
I have recently been using Arax in the Ukraine (http://araxfoto.com/) for recoating and can recommend them, with the usual caveats that both recoating and the postal system are risky. Of course, for a valuable lens you can't do any better than Focal Point (http://www.focalpointlens.com/)
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