I wanted to post about a lens that is not seen very often, and is almost forgotten. The Taylor, Taylor and Hobson Rapid View Portrait (or R.V.P.) is the grandfather of a lot of soft focus meniscus lenses from the 1910s - 1920s such as the Cooke Achromatic Portrait, the Karl Struss Pictorial, the Pinkham & Smith Semi-Achromat, the Bausch & Lomb Portrait Plastigmat, and even the Kodak 305 and 405 Portrait lenses. Clarence White and Alfred Stieglitz among others used the RVP for their pictorialist works, perhaps this one:
more White
The RVP has a long barrel, with an achromatic doublet meniscus in the rear. The front holds only the iris, at F8 or sometimes mentioned at F7.5. The workmanship on all TTH lenses is of the highest quality, with deep, precise engraving, the patented "exactly three turns to remove" flange, and a glowing brass lacquer so hard their lenses usually look 50 years younger than they are. These two 130 year old TTH lenses of mine have lacquer that looks brand new. It's easy to see why they ended up making the Cooke lenses.
But the RVP was made in the 1880s, not the 1920s, much earlier than the second wave of soft focus enthusiasts. For a decade or more, this was the lens to use if you wanted soft focus. Earlier photographers experimented with opened up landscape lenses or shot "slightly out of focus" conventional lenses. Actually, in the 1800s a "view lens" meant a landscape lens, and the Rapid View (RV) was TTH's version, at F11. At some point, they realized that opening up the lens to F8 would give a softness that was conducive for portraits. Thus, the Rapid View Portrait was born. As you can see, the two lenses are quite similar, but notice the larger front iris on the RVP (on left).
The story is that in 1913 TTH/Cooke was requested to remake the RVP, because a new generation of photographers wanted a lens like the first Pictorialists used. So they brought out the Cooke Achromatic Portrait Lens f/7.5. If you compare them, they are identical to the RVP except for the engraving. A couple years later Karl Struss and Smith started making similar lenses, and the rest is history.
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