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Thread: Rapid View Portrait (RVP) Pictorial lens

  1. #91

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    Re: Rapid View Portrait (RVP) Pictorial lens

    I have it on good authority that the term "three strikes, you're out law" was coined from the "three turns and it's out" TTH patented thread.

    Did you know Dallmeyer also had standardized threads in their flanges? I think several other British lens companies did too. I have a lensboard with a flange on it that will hold three of my Dallmeyers, a portrait, a RR, and a wide angle.

  2. #92

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    Re: Rapid View Portrait (RVP) Pictorial lens

    As I understand it, TTH were (at the very least) 'early adopters' of the RPS standard for lens screw mounts, and the thread for this smaller size will be 24 TPI (threads per inch) Whitworth.

    The Early Photography site (here) says:

    The usual method of attaching the lens to the camera was a screw thread, standard thread sizes were proposed by the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) which were adopted by some manufacturers including Taylor, Taylor & Hobson (T.T.H.) and, from around 1890, Ross. The RPS sizes, first proposed in 1881 and later modified, used a Whitworth Angular thread, for small diameters 24 threads per inch was used, for sizes above 3" 12 tpi. [Ref 2]

    An important development was made by T.T.H. in 1892 by chamfering the start of the thread which made picking up the thread much easier. [Ref 3]


    [Ref 2 is 'BJA 1900, 1123. BJA 1902, 1125a.' (British Journal Photographic Almanac)]
    [Ref 3 is 'BP 3019/1892' (maybe 'BJP' ? British Journal of Photography ?)]

    Here I think is the original proposal for the standard in the RPS archives:
    https://archive.rps.org/archive/volu...ume-22-page-91

    Working examples of the flanges and screws have been manufactured (by Whitworth, and Ross & Co):
    https://archive.rps.org/archive/volu...ume-24-page-39

    The flanges get an honourable mention in the Financial Statement:
    https://archive.rps.org/archive/volume-24/719087-volume-24-page-42

    etc. etc. A search for 'flange' in the RPS archives from 1882 onwards will bring more results...

  3. #93
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    Re: Rapid View Portrait (RVP) Pictorial lens

    Most lenses have just under a quarter-inch of threading for the flange. For Cooke's three turns, that's about a 13 tpi thread. (A 12 tpi thread would be exactly a quarter-inch of threads.) That math applies to all diameters.

    I really like it; three turns is plenty, the coarser threads are strong, and you have to be trying pretty hard to cross-thread.
    "I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."

  4. #94

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    Re: Rapid View Portrait (RVP) Pictorial lens

    Quote Originally Posted by peter brooks View Post
    As I understand it, TTH were (at the very least) 'early adopters' of the RPS standard for lens screw mounts, and the thread for this smaller size will be 24 TPI (threads per inch) Whitworth.
    Wray too adopted the 'RPS Standard flange threads" but it appears that the 'standard' may not have been as 'standardised' as it should have been. From my reading and practical experience there seems to have been variation even in the 'standard' threads. I seem to remember reading about meetings between the various manufacturers where some progress was made but complete standardisation may not have been thoroughly achieved. Early Wray lenses nearly fit later' standard' flanges but don't and some later lenses seem not to either. I think that thread tolerance and interpretation of thread parameters remained a problem.

  5. #95

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    Re: Rapid View Portrait (RVP) Pictorial lens

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Sawyer View Post
    ... Even the most modern lf lenses seems a bit less "civilized" by comparison...
    Quite right... I'm thinking that the delicious fit of TTH lenses to their flanges is in part due to the use of the Whitworth thread (the story of which is itself interesting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britis...dard_Whitworth) but also to the extrordinarily precise engineering carried out at the company. The document I mentioned in post #69 (Lenses: Their Construction) describes them using gauges to work to tolerances of 1/1000 inch (pages 9 and 10 of the 14).

    Quote Originally Posted by goamules View Post
    Did you know Dallmeyer also had standardized threads in their flanges?
    Do you have any Dallmeyer lens that fit TTH flanges? Or vice versa? Just wondering

  6. #96
    Tin Can's Avatar
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    Re: Rapid View Portrait (RVP) Pictorial lens

    Just read the link in this post and the entire very good thread

    Fascinating

    Quote Originally Posted by peter brooks View Post
    I've started a list of RV (Rapid View), RVP (Rapid View Portrait) and CAP (Cooke Achromatic Portrait) lenses - it's at RV, RVP & CAP serial numbers.

    The details have been compiled from these forum pages (and members), and trawling the web (Bill, you will see that I picked up on your post on another thread about Clarence White's RVP kept at Princeton). I am including lenses from casket sets that are a complete lens (supplied with another complete lens, usually a RR or WAR I think) but not (as yet) casket sets where there is one interchangeable barrel to make different configurations.

    If you can add any please PM me, include ALL of the engraving if you could, and the max aperture as recorded on the aperture ring. A little obsessive but I'd also be interested to know if the aperture ring is (gently) removable from the barrel (not the lens section at the base), and (in the case of RVs and RVPs) how f11 is written on the aperture ring (as 11 or 11.3).

    Observations

    1) The VM suggests that there was a restart of serial numbers at some point. These lenses seem chronologically correct in serial number order, based on the company and location engraved on them.

    2) The VM mentions that when they launched their patent squared-off thread end TTH stated that some 20,000 older TTH lenses could be updated with this feature (Am Photo 02/09/1892, p160 is the VM ref). This seems somewhat at odds with the serial numbers and date range recorded.

    3) Apparently there are no surviving factory records of TTH serial numbers and dates. The Cooke (anastigmat) Portrait lens are later, so that serial number spreadsheet list doesn't help.

    4) The engraved company name and location can suggest a range of years of manufacture.


    I'm still intrigued by the range of Equiv Focal lengths for a given plate size, given the very apparent precision of TTH. I know nothing about lens construction, old glass etc but came across ''The Book of Photography - Practical, Theoretic and Applied' by Paul N. Hasluck (published 1907) which has some pages about lens manufacture at TTH. The book is around 880 pages so I've extracted the relevant sections into a subset - it's also shared from Google Drive as Lenses: Their Construction. No doubt methods and techniques will have been honed but they can't be that far from those used when these lenses were made.
    Tin Can

  7. #97

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    Re: Rapid View Portrait (RVP) Pictorial lens

    The Corrado D'Agnostini / Ivan Rose book 'Dallmeyer Grubb Ross Taylor, Taylor & Hobson Horne, Thornthwaite & Wood - Photographic Lenses in 19th Century Great Britain and Ireland' mentions the RV and RVP, and shows (amongst others) a very early RVP (No. 526) with slot for waterhouse stops, engraved 'T. S. & W. Taylor, Leicester' (W. S. H. Hobson joined TTH in 1887, so it's very early in their history). It is described in the book as a 'single achromat'. Presumably either that or the fact that it takes waterhouse stops (with a small minimum aperture) would account for the larger than usual coverage of half plate for an RVP of the focal length (8.3").

    I had thought that the RV came first and that the RVP was a later addition (although both were sold concurrently at some time) - that assumption is obviously wrong!

    The book also says:

    There is also a Rapid View Meniscus R.V.M. f/16 listed in 1/4, 1/2, whole plate, 10x8 and 10x12 inch formats.
    I've never heard of this RVM before - has anyone seen it in an advert or catalogue, or even better come across an example in real life?

  8. #98

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    Re: Rapid View Portrait (RVP) Pictorial lens

    This is a thread that deserves a Little more mileage!.

    Taylor and Taylor were a late newcomer to the growing number of lens manufacturers around 1890 - like Zeiss in Germany. Until they got hold of the Cooke designed triplet, they basically made the range of lenses that all the established makers in the UK (and Ireland) made for the expanding legions of advanced amateur and family photographers. They appeared to have not tried to make and sell to the commercial photographers (Petzvals). So they made copies of the RR (both “normal” F7-8 and a wide angle F16) and the 2 or 3 lens achromats made by just about every single maker in Britain.

    I don’t think any of the other maker’s considered that their “view/landscape” lenses could be used for portraits. If they did, they would still much rather sell from their Petzval range (higher profitability). Perhaps they did mention it after T,T & H began the RVP line -stressing the portrait use. I think it it quite likely that, although their RV, RVP is basically identical to the Ross, Dallmeyer etc. landscape meniscus, they were able to create the illusion that their RVP far more versatile than the established view lenses.

    I think this makes it likely then that the RVP was offered first - as a new standout lens.

    It is strange that, as far as I can recall, none of the established competitors took up the challenge of modifying their existing landscape lens range with an iris down to F8.It was left to niche individuals and companies in the 20th century.

    Fortunately, although I missed out on the RVP, I have a number of competitor’s view lenses which mimic the RVP when the iris is screwed off! In fact I have the same lens that Emil Schildt used to start off this thread:

    https://www.largeformatphotography.i...rsonality-quot

  9. #99
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    Re: Rapid View Portrait (RVP) Pictorial lens

    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Tribe View Post
    They appeared to have not tried to make and sell to the commercial photographers (Petzvals). So they made copies of the RR (both “normal” F7-8 and a wide angle F16) and the 2 or 3 lens achromats made by just about every single maker in Britain.

    I don’t think any of the other maker’s considered that their “view/landscape” lenses could be used for portraits.
    Many makers advertised the convertibility of their Petzvals, using only the front element as an achromatic landscape lens. The Jamin/Darlot Cone Centralisateur was specifically designed for easy conversion between a portrait (full Petzval) or paysage (landscape) lens.

    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Tribe View Post
    It is strange that, as far as I can recall, none of the established competitors took up the challenge of modifying their existing landscape lens range with an iris down to F8.It was left to niche individuals and companies in the 20th century.
    Irises were pretty unusual in the earlier lenses. Wheel stops, Waterhouse stops, and especially washer stops that closed the landscape lenses well below f/8 were standard for the early landscape lenses. Using the landscape lens at wide/soft apertures was rare up until Emerson, and then the Pictorialist movement.
    "I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."

  10. #100

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    Re: Rapid View Portrait (RVP) Pictorial lens

    Time for an interlude? RVP, paper neg, 5x7, inverted in PS. Shot in 2018, 'top hat' exposure with the (red Morrocan leather) lens cap.


    Old track by Peter Brooks

    We could do with more images in this thread!

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