older lenses - eye candy :)

[Joseph O'Neil]

The talk about the apo-ronars got me thinking and looking. so, for no particualr reason other than it is Saturday, cloudy, I'm stuck inside, etc, etc, I figured I would show off my older process and aerial camera lenses. Attached photograph is below.

Starting at the upper right hand corner, and going clockwise..
- 178mm F2.5 Kodak Aero ektar, dated (by serial number) to 1943, it's one of the "hot" ones; Not mounted, and you see a red filter on front.
- Goerz Hycon 3 inch, F4 aerial camera lens, not sure of date, mounted in a fixed body, used briefly for some 4x5 astro-photography I was trying, untill I blew the motor drives and drive corrector on my old Losmand mount.
- kinda a wird one, German made C-claron, NOT G, but "C-Claron" lens, no iris, 190mm, F4.5. Not sure where it come form or how to even use it?
- JML 305mm, F9 lens. Haven't trid it yet.
- okay, not an old lens, just my 240mm G-Claron, F9 lens in shutter. I also have the 270, 210 and 150mm versions in G-clarons. yeah, I kinda like G-clarons
- Brown Mfg 14inch (355mm) F9.5 process lens. tried it couple of times on my 8x10, sharp as a razor;
- 305mm Apo-Nikkor, F9, covers my 8x10 head on. Haven't used it much yet.
and the best for last....

- 12 inch, F4 Perkin-Elmer aerial camera lens. Haven't actually used it yet - it is almost too big to fit on my 8x10. The only information I can find about this lens at all is some of them were used in a camera that was carried by the SR-71 Blackbird. The serial number on the lens is "53" so I am guessing not a lot of these puppies were ever made. If anybody has any information on this lens, woudl love to hear about it. No iris in it either.

enjoy, would love to see your old oddball lenses guys.

joe

PS - the yellow filter in the middle isa WW2 era aerial camera filter, more amber than yellow. They work GREAT on front of these old process lenses. they may not be coated, but wow, flat and sharp. Just don't shoot into the sun with one.

[Dan Fromm]

Um, Joe, about that 12"/4 Perkin-Elmer. My USAF data sheets list three 12"/4 Perkin-Elmer lenses. No guarantee that your beast is one of the them.

The first is described as an "aspheric Tessar," covers 2 1/4" x 2 1/4". AWAR not given, but amazingly sharp wide open.

The second is a six elements in four groups double Gauss type, covers 4.5" x 4.5". AWAR 75 lp/mm wide open on Plus X with a high contrast target (1000:1) and Wratten 12 filter. AWAR 102 lp/mm on Pan X, other conditions the same. Doesn't seem to be that well achromatised. This is the one that looks most like yours.

The third is a 6/4 plasmat type, covers 9" x 9". AWAR 26 lp/mm wide open on Super XX with a Wratten 12, target contrast not specified.

Count reflections and perhaps you'll know of the three you have. As I said, there's no guarantee that yours is mentioned in my set of data sheets.

Oh, yeah. AWAR means Area Weighted Average Resolution.

[Joseph O'Neil]

Hi Dan

[QUOTE=Dan Fromm;726173]U

The first is described as an "aspheric Tessar," covers 2 1/4" x 2 1/4". AWAR not given, but amazingly sharp wide open.

The second is a six elements in four groups double Gauss type, covers 4.5" x 4.5". AWAR 75 lp/mm wide open on Plus X with a high contrast target (1000:1) and Wratten 12 filter. AWAR 102 lp/mm on Pan X, other conditions the same. Doesn't seem to be that well achromatised. This is the one that looks most like yours.

The third is a 6/4 plasmat type, covers 9" x 9". AWAR 26 lp/mm wide open on Super XX with a Wratten 12, target contrast not specified.

QUOTE]

I think your middle choice is possibly the most correc too. Projecting the image circle agianst a wall, it clearly covers more than 2.25". the front element on this lens is almost 5" wide,a nd the rear element is almost 4.5" wide.

Also I forgot to add, it say "HYCON" on it. I cannotprove it directly, but I've been told that the "Hycon lens" (wasn't there an actualy company by that name?) was either a copy of, or more likely, inspried by the Zeiss biogon. Cannot prove either, but my Goerz 3 inch hycon sure looks like a copy of a 75mm Zeiss biogon I used to own, so maybe that's how that rumour started.

There is a fair bit of information about Perkin-Elemer Hycon lenses being used in both the U-2 and the SR-71, but I cannot find my exact same lens.

The focus behind the rear element is very close. I estimate that mounted in my 8x10 - if i can ever figure out how to do that - the rear element and the gorund glass would only be about 6-8 inches apart at infinity. Very close focus for such a large lens.


Finally the one last reason I think your second choice is the bang on one is the optician who gave it to me said the blue focus on it was not very good, and he knew I liked to shoot a lot of B&W film, so with a yellow or red filter, who cares? I cannot prove it by documentation, but my optician friend (who works for commerical & industrial interests) tested some various aerial camera lenses and found on almost all he tested to have very poor blue focus.

We talked about this once, and what we think - cannot prove - is that these lenses ARE apochromatic - but the three colouors they are balanced for are the green, red and INFRA-RED.


Most aerial camera films are, or used to be, red extended in their sensitivity, not unlike the old Tech-pan or even similar to the characteristics of Ilford's SFX film (about 720 nm I think?).

Also there were definately infra-red aerial camera films, which I think is where or how the old HSI from Kodak got it's origin, going back to the Second World war. I say that because my 1943 Aero-Ektar has terrible blue focus, and these lenses always came with either red or yellow (more amber than yellow, IMO) filters.

So I think these various lens designers wanted a lens as sharp as possible in the 650nm to maybe 750nm or even 800nm range, and they did so by sacrificing the blue focus. I mean, can you imagine the effort and the very high costs it would take to have a "true" apocromatic lens that focused not three, but FOUR light paths from blue to near infra-red? And if you are using film at the time that is mostly B&W, and you wanted near IR and IR for intelligence gathering, why bother with a blue focus to begin with?

Again this all conjecture on my part to begin with, I cannot prove any of it hard and fast, but I thnk most of these lenses, at least up until some time in the 1970s, maybe even later, were made to be optimized around the visible red to near infra-red ranges.


I do have a reducing back down to 4x5 on my 8x10 camera, so some day, just to say I did it, I have to try the thing, but I am not sure how yet as the rear of the lens just barely clears the front opening on my 8x10. As for mounting it on my Tachihara....naw.

[Steven Tribe]

VM reports a C claron - also without an iris but this was F5.6. They assume "some kind of industrial Use". Related to the early post-war repro clarons? Best at 1:1?

[Ed Kelsey]

Damn what a pile of junk

[Dan Fromm]

Joe, thanks for the reply.

The spec sheet shows spectral response for choice 2. Sorry, it absolutely positively isn't an apochromat. Corrected for 5461 - 6563 Angstrom. It seems that very often designers of lenses for aerial cameras gave up achromatism to get better image quality for a very narrow range of wavelengths.

That said, some are much better across the visible than others. I don't think it is safe to generalize about them.

I think that minus blue filters were used to cut through haze, not necessarily take advantage of the lens' optimization.

I still have a few lenses made for aerial cameras, mainly for cameras that shot nominal 6x6 on 70 mm film. 4"/2.0 (covers 2x3) and 12"/4 (made for 6x6, just covers 4x5) TTH are very good, 38/4.5 Zeiss (BRD) Biogon (covers 84 mm) is superb, 1.75"/2.8 Elcan (6x6) id middling, 100/2.5 Uran-27 (covers 113 mm) is ok, 100/5.6 S.F.O.M. (covers 4x5) is ok. All produced Ektachromes with no color fringing visible at 12x.

Hycon was (is?) a camera manufacturer, AFAIK bought lenses in. Y'r Goerz Hycon ought to be a Biogon made under licence.

Re y'r doorstop's back focus, the spec sheet says 6.23". People don't appreciate that 6/4 double Gauss types can be somewhat telephoto, i.e., have back focus shorter than one would expect. That's why early f/1.4 lenses for 35 mm SLRs were typically 58 mm; the designers couldn't get good enough image quality and long enough back focus with a shorter focal length.

Re y'r doorstop's coverage. The spec sheet is unambiguous. Its for 4.5" x 4.5" on 5" roll film. At 15 degrees off-axis the point of best focus is around .1 mm in front of the film plane (best focus on axis) and the curves are turning sharply upwards.

Cheers,

Dan

p.s., doorstop is not an insult, in this context it is a term of endearment and exasperation.

I see doorstops like your 12"/4 Perkin Elmer and my 3"/4.5 Pacific Optical as somewhat of poisoned gifts.

[Joseph O'Neil]

p.s., doorstop is not an insult, in this context it is a term of endearment and exasperation.

I see doorstops like your 12"/4 Perkin Elmer and my 3"/4.5 Pacific Optical as somewhat of poisoned gifts.

Hi Dan;
No, not at all, I love the term "doorstop". As for "poisoned gifts", well, when you consider those two rear elements on my areo-ektar are radioactive, yep - that truely is poisoned, isn't it?

As for ed's comment about "a pile of junk" - EXACTLY - that's the beauty of it all, you would be amazed what you can find in "
junk".

My G-claron was once considered "junk" many years ago by some because it was only F9, not F5.6. That old Brown process lens may not have a big brand name on it, but it's one of the sharpest lenses I have used. My old Crown Graphic, in near mint shape (at least when I bought it years ago -it's been used a bit since then ), was considered "old junk" by the seller when I bought it.

So yes, junk, and darned proud of it. give me junk any day.

[Dan Fromm]

Junk? That's my equipment. Good junk, of course.

Read about my lens junk here: http://www.galerie-photo.com/1-lens-6x9-dan-fromm.html , http://www.galerie-photo.com/2-lens-6x9-dan-fromm.html , http://www.galerie-photo.com/3-lens-6x9-dan-fromm.html

[Ole Tjugen]

That's not junk.

Neither is this:

[Ed Kelsey]

Ok not junk...POS