Fujinon 1200mm F24 Lens Found!!!

[xkaes]

There was one on EBAY a while ago. As I recall asking around $10,000. It is single coated, like other early A lenses, but in the right light you might think it's multi-coated. Check out this serial #:



The 1200mm is marked inside the filter ring. It weighed in at an impressive FIVE pounds and needed FOUR AND A HALF FEET of bellows to focus at infinity! If you want a 1:1 magnification, you'll need NINE FEET of bellows. But it was really too long for most photographers, so it was not produced for very long. This was a special order lens so it is nearly impossible to find -- let alone to afford. The maximum aperture is f24, not f22, and while the Fuji literature lists the minimum aperture as f90, the f-stops actually run to f128.

http://www.subclub.org/fujinon/byfl.htm

[carterwj]

Yes. I have seen that photo several places. It is from the Fujinon display in Tokyo. I wonder how many they made? If they only made 3, then I guess I can give up ever owning one.

[xkaes]

I've read that they made a dozen or so, but that's hearsay. It was a special order lens, as Fuji said, and very expensive, so they may have only made them when PAID IN FULL. Who knows?

[Drew Wiley]

More than 12 years later and no more sightings? Maybe just like Ivory billed woodpeckers, there are no breeding pairs left.

[Jim Andrada]

Particularly Ivory Billed Woodpeckers with 1200 mm wood p....Whoops - Lenses - I meant Lenses....1200mm LENSES, not 1200mm p - well you know what I meant.

[xkaes]

My guess is that Fuji just wanted to prove that they could play with the BIG BOYS -- and NOT to make money. Plus it helped in research & development.

That sort of thing is still happening today.

[Mark Sampson]

Certainly there would have been a very small market for these behemoths.
I'm reminded of a magazine (American Photographer?) article I saw in the late 1980s, where they mentioned that Leica was offering a 1200mm lens for their 35mm SLRs. And if you special-ordered this lens, they'd throw in a new VW Fox (then the cheapest car on sale in the US) for free.

[Tin Can]

Canon

https://news.ifa-berlin.com/canon-lenses/

and I think they made a 2000 mm which fit in a huge box

one off

[Drew Wiley]

xkaes - Fuji was one the big boys, still is. I don't know all the exact specifications of this particular 1200 mm lens, but unlike typical long process lenses, these were specialized plasmats designed with a rather large angle of view in mind, along with excellent tangential performance. And they apparently wanted a full series of focal lengths, even though the 600 and 1200 versions had a very limited number of potential customers. The coverage or image circle would have been enormous. But really, anyone can get any kind of unique lens they want even today for the right price; you might even get a Lexus thrown in for free.

[xkaes]

Certainly there would have been a very small market for these behemoths.
I'm reminded of a magazine (American Photographer?) article I saw in the late 1980s, where they mentioned that Leica was offering a 1200mm lens for their 35mm SLRs. And if you special-ordered this lens, they'd throw in a new VW Fox (then the cheapest car on sale in the US) for free.

That was a Leica 800mm f6.3 -- but it cost even more than the Fujinon 1200mm at the time.