A. M. lens: Who made it? "W W" code = ???

[Dan Fromm]

Just to lighten this whole subject up a bit. I recently tested a "UU" 14" lens on 4x5 and I can't see how we even won the bloody war. I'm keeping it for soft focus though, it'll never be sharp.
Pete.

Pete, thinking of weight, the one of those monstrosities that I've picked up and looked at and set down again was so filthy inside and out that I doubted it would clean up at all. How cruddy is yours?

[Pete Watkins]

Dan, it came apart nicely and there's very little crap there. I't's probably what used to be known as a Friday afternoon lens (they'd all been to the pub at lunchtime and just wanted to get home for the weekend). Stuff flew through QC in the afternoon just to clear the benches for Monday morning.
A lot of people who owned Rover cars in the 60's & 70's knew about this syndrome, not to mention Lucas............Oh God, not Lucas!!!
Pete.

[Dan Fromm]

Rover. You would mention Rover. I had a P6B. Do not ever mention Rover to me again.

[Steven Tribe]

certainly the AM lenses weren't as good quality. as say a 'pukka Dallmeyer lens' - from memory, Steven Tribe has said this on here too

No - not me. I have never even owned an AM 14a etc.
But I have contributed with some background (secondhand info) about the use of temporary production sites after 1940, by Ross, Dallmeyer, T,T & H and NOS. So makeshift production facilities as well as a temporary workforce, probably did have an effect on both quality of production and quality control. But many AM lenses where either made pre-1940 and in the better period, post 1943. Many AM lenses never got to be used and were disposed of in the late 40's and early 50's to an eager public as not much else was available.

I always thought that "Monday morning" cars were even worse, due to missing and hungover staff. The UK didn't make reliable cars after the separate chassis system was given up. I was another sufferer in the 60's and early 70's.

[Ian Greenhalgh]

I don't have much time for internet nonsense to be honest, if you listened to every 'fact' you heard on the internet, you'd never learn much of value.

So I prefer to ask the lens what it can do.

Here's my 4.5/5" in it's new home in an Alphax #3. It's one of those restricted aperture Alphaxes from an oscilloscope camera and used to house one of those 1.9/3" Oscillo-Raptars. The maximum aperture opening just happens to be the same as the diameter of the glass of this lens so they make a perfect fit together. I'll be using this lens/shutter on 5x7 and I'll report how it does.

[Andrew Plume]

........err, sorry Steven

v best

andrew

[Andrew Plume]

exactly Ian, exactly

.........look forward to hearing what it can do etc etc

what's this about "......internet nonsense...."???

andrew

[IanG]

I don't have much time for internet nonsense to be honest, if you listened to every 'fact' you heard on the internet, you'd never learn much of value.

So I prefer to ask the lens what it can do.

Here's my 4.5/5" in it's new home in an Alphax #3. It's one of those restricted aperture Alphaxes from an oscilloscope camera and used to house one of those 1.9/3" Oscillo-Raptars. The maximum aperture opening just happens to be the same as the diameter of the glass of this lens so they make a perfect fit together. I'll be using this lens/shutter on 5x7 and I'll report how it does.

So what's the aperture restriction on the shutter ? The main problem with that particular WA AM lens is it only stops down to f11 in it's normal barrel I see a few of them every year and always for more than I'd pay for them.

I have a 180mm f4.5 CZJ Tessar with a similar restricted aperture range in a strange US shutter with a single speed, it looks like it was possibly a pre-WWII US military lens with a mechanical linkage to adjust the aperture.

AM lenses go back well before WWII as Steven Tribe says, I have an Ross AM 141mm f16 WA that covers 10x8 and is obviously a Ross Protar.

Ian

[Ian Greenhalgh]

I was lucky, I bought two of these 4.5/5" together in a job lot of junk for next to nothing. The apertures in both didn't work, but the glass was fine. Yup, like the more common Ross WA Xpres 4/5" they only close to f11 in the original barrel.

The restriction in the Alphax shutter is simply that the blades don't open as far as they do in a normal Alphax, apparently you can open them and remove a pin that causes the restriction.

I haven't recalculated the aperture yet, but I think it will close to f64 now, if not, f45, so it has a much more useful range in this shutter than it did in barrel.

[Ian Greenhalgh]

I forgot to mention, I opened the rear cell and it has two airspaced elements, so it's not a tessar type.

I can't get the front open, but the external curves are different to the rear cell so it's asymmetrical.

I've drawn the layout as best as I can determine, in the hopes that someone might be able to identify what it is: