hello all,
just found this one on the auction site : click.
I have some questions for the experts - is this real or fake ? There is no 11" lens in the catalogs at Seth's great site, which is somewhat suspicious. If it's not fake, what series is it - 1 or 2 (other series are not F6) ? Coverage should be 5x7 ?
rado
p.s. You can hate me as much as you want for posting this, the final price will be HUGE regardless of my posting - item is spelled correct, sorry.
If it is a fake, it would seem also to be a forgery with its P&S markings. That would seem to me to reduce the likelihood of being fake. The fact that Seth's catalogs don't show an 11" isn't particularly troubling, Many lens makers didn't list all the focal lengths that were ever available in any particular catalog.
I would be a little reluctant to pay a HUGE price for it, though. The term "Semi-Achromatic" implies that some chromatic aberration was deliberately left in. This could cause difficulties with most modern films. I think one of the very many diffused focus lenses which use spherical aberration as the softening factor would be a more versatile choice. Even though these are rather exlpensive these days, they are apt to be substantially less costly than thoe with the magic Pinkham & Smith name.
Regarding coverage, since a 12" was listed for 5X7 and a 9" for 4X5, this makes me guess that it would be a littl;e short of full 5X7 coverage. Sometimes this is just what people want, however, since they find the effects in the corners interesting. (This is assuming the lens is not sharply cut off past the circle of definition. This would be unlikely in a lens of this age and type.)
At the prices these things are getting I'm looking into used trophy engraving equipment so I can make a few up myself.
No one knows the answers to your questions.
If it were still 1919 and you visited the showroom and talked to Mr. Smith I rather believe he would show you a dozen lenses and each one would look different. Nothing was standardized. Everything was hand finished.
Is that one real? If there's an expert I hope he steps up because I'll be all ears.
A similar lens to that sold on the live auction site a couple of months ago and didn't really go all that high. Everybody's afraid, naturally, that they're going to spend goboons of money only to find out, it's phony, it's missing some impossible pieces, or some other reason that quickly chops a zero off the price they just paid.
Ernest - thanks for your reply. The left in chromatic aberrations are no problem. I own a lot of soft focus lenses from Pinkham to Imagon, all of them produce wonderfull results on modern b&w films.
Jim - I hoped you know the answers. Thanks for your reply.
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