Waves on the Beach (Multi-Focal)

[Whir-Click]

I have my newest Wollensak treasure, a 9.5” Beach Multi-Focal lens, apart for cleaning and it occurred to me that I haven’t seen a good illustration of this lens’s distinguishing characteristic depicted elsewhere. For the minuscule number of people interested, here are a few photos to demonstrate.

At first glance, the lens design appears as a standard Tessar, indistinguishable from Wollensak’s contemporary Velostigmat Series II. However, as one looks closely and plays the light across the lens surface, the “wavy” or ringed pattern in the glass becomes noticeable.

Of the limited number of Beach lenses that I have examined, nearly all have had the “waves” on both the front crown and the positive element of the rear cemented doublet. Some examples show very prominent waves arranged in concentric bulls eye-like zones; the effect in others is quite subtle.

The operating principle is that the lens’s aspherical surfaces are ground into multiple focal lengths, thereby enhancing the apparent depth of field on the image plane. The patent explains and illustrates it best.

[newt]

If I saw a lens element coming off the production line like this I would have to shut everything down to find out why such large mid-spacial frequency errors were being generated. It is hard to believe that this micro fresnel surface could be generated to spec once let alone in production. I look forward to hearing more about it, and seeing images once you finish cleaning, and reassembling it!!

[cowanw]

Keep us posted please. Years earlier there was one on Ebay. I wish I bought it.

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

Thank you! I always wondered what these looked like, but have never actually seen one.

[Whir-Click]

I’m an enthusiastic but admittedly mediocre photographer. If you want to see what the Beach lens can do in the hands of a skilled professional, Abel’s “Professional Portrait Lightings” has several examples. John Erickson’s contribution on page 72 is particularly illustrative of the look the lens claims in its brochure, “not extreme sharpness in outline - not an unwarranted softness in outline but really the effect as it appears to the eye - a full rounded form.”

Erickson’s description includes, “Like most photographers I have a battery of lenses, but my pet has long been a 16” Wollensak Beach Multi-Focal which I have used in this case. . .”

[Vaughn]

Thank you. Both the patent and brochure were interesting -- as is the lens.

[John Layton]

I find this extremely intriguing...and wonder why this technology was not pursued further - both among different manufacturers and forward over time.

[jnantz]

I always imagined the wavy-ness to be less-subtle, and only on the rear element, thanks for presenting this !

[Whir-Click]

The brochure linked above is particularly neat because it depicts the collaborators in the Beach lens’s development (as reported by the Buffalo Evening News in 1929) . The front cover shows Rochester photographer J. Ernest Mock taking a picture of Howard D. Beach as he holds the eponymous lens. Inside, the gentleman wearing a pinstriped suit in the comparison photos is John C. Wollensak (company vice president, founder of the lens department, and brother of Andrew).

Indulging in pure speculation as to why the lens remained obscure and short-lived, I would cite the exquisitely bad timing of unveiling a novel, very expensive lens five months before the stock market crash in 1929. Combine plummeting demand, likely high manufacturing cost and complexity, and the 1933 death of company champion John Wollensak and the Beach lens was gone from Wollensak’s 1934 catalog.

[cowanw]

The brochure linked above is particularly neat because it depicts the collaborators in the Beach lens’s development (as reported by the Buffalo Evening News in 1929) . The front cover shows Rochester photographer J. Ernest Mock taking a picture of Howard D. Beach as he holds the eponymous lens. Inside, the gentleman wearing a pinstriped suit in the comparison photos is John C. Wollensak (company vice president, founder of the lens department, and brother of Andrew).

Mock was George Eastman's favorite photographer. Here is a portrait by Mock