Those and other old lenses are great, and for people interested, I explicitly referred to Galli's webpage, so it was not an omission that I wasn't aware of. I had drawn a (vague) boundary at around the nineteen twenties, for the general reason that the performances of old portrait lenses are better documented, and people interested can more easily find information about them, and for the personal reason that I don't want to work with lenses without a shutter (and can't afford to send off a series of colossal brass lenses to S.K.Grimes to mount them in gargantuan Ilex #5 shutters, although I've considered the option).
To lower the price of the Lanthar, I also said that it's image circle is too small for front movements, it's colors are bad, it's less sharp than the Sironar-S, and it's radio activity will kill you instantly. What else would you want me to say?
If I can borrow your Dagor, I will test it for you! I've seen fabulous landscapes by Dagors, but was in doubt about its possibilities as a portrait lens; the examples I found seemed not to improve upon my favourite lenses. The only way to find out is to test one myself, but they happen to be too expensive to just buy one to try, and in Europe there is hardly anyone who owns one and from whom I could borrow. If I had been a landscape photographer, I would certainly have bought one, and then would have also used it for portraits if the occasion arises.
"I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."
for what its worth.. i was hoping to read about lens's for 8x10.
i also have the opinion, that a portrait is mainly an image, of mainly the face, that, expresses the I as a whole, not the whole body nor a scene with a body for good measure.?
so my opinion is worthless as i didnt really read it and didnt really look at the pictures.
through a glass darkly...
far out this the most interesting fred i've red...
through a glass darkly...
It's perfectly fine to take photo's of faces only, if you wish, and my test results equally apply to that interpretation of portraits. For 8x10", my results suggest that Tessars, Dialytes (not MC), and Heliars will be good, in addition to lenses that only exist/make sense for 8x10, so just translate focal lengths. I would say anything between 300mm and 480mm will do, but for close ups I would start at 360mm. Image circles that are tight at infinity will be large for portraits as you want them to be. Much more knowledgeable than I am on 8x10 is Jim Galli, who has a wonderful website (eh, just right now it doesn't work, hope it will come back.)
The problem with assessing dagors is that they, like tessars, were made for the better part
of a century, so have quite an internal evolution and variety of their own which can't be given a simple sterotype. I've simply used the later ones, and mostly for 8x10, which were
exquistely color-corrected; and yes, I did sometimes use them for landscape. But it is
really for portraiture that these lenses sing. The internal contrast of midtones and highlights is fabulous, and the nature of the edges is different from either the old-style
official portrait lenses and modern plastmats etc. A very important lens category in this
discussion.
Although I do not agree with every statement, I do appreciate the article and agree 100% that if you lay a well printed gelatin silver print alongside a well printed digital print, the gelatin will win hands down. I believe the problem is that too many people now are so used to the clinical sharpness, and strong edge contrast of digital images that they do not appreciate the beauty of an analog image.
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