Extremely Long Apo Ronars?

[Daniel Unkefer]

Wolf's long Apo-Ronars were sold on eBay.de last year.

Struan,
Did you follow those Wolf auctions? I'd be interested to know how the pricing went. Not too long ago I saw an Ebay auction for the 1700mm Apo Ronar, from a seller in South Africa. Asking price was $8000, or something like that. Looked way too big for a Sinar Norma board, too.

At the other end of the scale, Malone Camera in Dayton Ohio recently sold an 800mm F9 Apo Ronar for $399, it needed some work. Seriously tempted by that one.

[Bob Salomon]

Bob - I have a 420mm f9 Apo Ronar - where does it fit into your schedule of lenses and what is the maximum format can it be used with.

Gord

Found a brochure!

42° coverage, 67mm filter, 75mm slip-on size, 70mm rear diameter, 404.5 flange focal length, 68mm long without protective glass, 71.5mm with protective glass, 90mm x 1 mounting thread. The preceeding is for the lens in NF mount. Not in shutter. At f22 @1:1 it covered 16 x 20"(40x50cm). The 420mm was available as an Apo Ronar and as an Apo Ronar CL. The non CL had a 72mm x 1 mounting thread. Both had an effective focal length of 421.3mm. On the CL smallest aperture was f90. On the non CL it was f260. Rear mount on CL was 88.5mm and the flange focal length on the CL was 401mm, length was 64mm and the maximum lens diameter was 105mm.

So which one do you have?

[Dan Fromm]

Interesting that the plain and CL don't have the same specifications. Bob, is this due to a redesign or to differences between the barrels?

[Bob Salomon]

Interesting that the plain and CL don't have the same specifications. Bob, is this due to a redesign or to differences between the barrels?

All they told us was that the CL had a linear diaphragm scale and the non CL didn't. As we never sold any of the Apo Ronars in NF mount I can't answer your question.

[Armin Seeholzer]

Looked way too big for a Sinar Norma board, too.

There was a special 5x7 Frontstandard with larger lensboard for the Norma availabel, for thos big beasts!
And also a special bellows to thad front, it was damned expensiv, as all special items from Sinar!

Cheers Armin

[Gord Robinson]

Bob - thanks for taking the time to find the information on the lens. The only information on the lens is that it is a Apo-Ronar 420mm f9. It is mounted in a Copal 3 shutter and the aperture scale goes to f90 although the aperture close done further past f90 so I guess it must close to f260. It is interesting that it will cover 16x20 so now I will have to mount it on my 8x10 Kodak 2D and try it out. Both caps are present and the lens is in mint condition.

Do you have any idea when they made the 420mm lens?

Thanks
Gord

[Len Middleton]

Gord,

As per Bob's comments above it covers 16x20 at 1:1 @ f22. At infinity however, its coverage @ f22 is 323mm or just a little over 8x10 with some movement.

You need to watch the specs (1:1 reproduction versus at infinity) on those process lenses.

Regards,

Len

[Struan Gray]

Struan,
Did you follow those Wolf auctions? I'd be interested to know how the pricing went.

Daniel, I'm afraid I didn't keep a record of the final price for the Wolf Apo-Ronars. I'm trying to wean myself off gawping at long lenses on eBay :-)

Of course, you only have the seller's word for it that they were the actual lenses used by Wolf. On the other hand, there's no reason why not.

Among the auctions I have cluttering up my hard drive, I have a couple for 1070 mm Apo-Ronars which fetched 750-800 Euros. The only listings for 1800 mm Apo-Ronars I have seen were asking 15 000 to 20 000 as a buy-it-now price, and I lost interest at that level.

Roland Wirtz is a photographer who uses one of the long Apo-Ronars to photograph whole football games onto ULF in a home-made box camera. Exploring his photostream on Flickr is a good way to get a feel for the logistics of using these beasts:

Attaching a lens: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9441978...7602433070433/

The thing on the right is a camera too: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9441978...7602433305837/

[Struan Gray]

http://cgi.ebay.de/Sinar-Objektiv-Ro...3A1%7C294%3A50

PS: note that the lensboard is one of the special ones that fit on the 13x18 standard.

[Marco Annaratone]

At the end of this paper you can find a picture of a six-glass APO-Ronar 16/1000. The weight is about ten pounds.
Cheers!