De vere 4x5 monorail

alex millman · Jul 10, 2014

I have been offered a de vere monorail camera to buy for £200 wit a couple of lenses and accessories. Has anybody had any experience with these cameras? Are they a good buy?

garnmanuk · Jul 11, 2014

I have a De Vere Devon 5x4, which is a rugged, reliable camera that I have used for location photography in the past. It is a bit bulky and heavy to carry around on location when compared with a 5x4 field camera, but I continued to use the De Vere on location, for landscape and architectural subjects, because of its range of movements. It is excellent as a studio still-life camera. £200 could be a good deal, especially as a 5x4 field camera with a couple of lens can be at least double that price. What are the lenses that are included? If you hope to carry out studio work a couple of longer lenses within the range 150mm upwards could be useful. If landscape photography is your interest, a wide-angle would be useful. It is worth checking that there is no slight play in the front and rear standards when the movements are locked. If there is play this can be eliminated by a bit of maintenance.

alex millman · Jul 11, 2014

The lenses are an agfa 150mm and a polaroid 90mm. I don't have any experience with these lenses. Are they any good? If they are a couple of duds i have a few other LF lenses tucked away somewhere.

Dan Fromm · Jul 11, 2014

alex millman said:
The lenses are an agfa 150mm and a polaroid 90mm. I don't have any experience with these lenses. Are they any good? If they are a couple of duds i have a few other LF lenses tucked away somewhere.

Agfa sold many lenses. Which one comes withthe camera?

If the 90 mm is engraved Polaroid it will probably cover 4x5 closeup but not at distance.

alex millman · Jul 11, 2014

It an agfa anastigmat

garnmanuk · Jul 13, 2014

The Agfa and Polaroid lenses could have a distinctive quality, especially if they are uncoated. The main issue could be lack of covering power, especially with the 90mm, which Dan mentioned. Stopping down to near to the smallest aperture could help, although diffraction may cause an overall softening. However, many years ago when I was a college student I occasionally used an uncoated Wray wide-angle, a 89mm I think, which had no shutter, with a Gandofi 5x4 with bookform dark slides. The Wray had to be stopped fully down for exterior photography, to enable a guestimation of 1/4 sec to be given by uncovering the lens! The sharpness was surprisingly good, even into the corners, and the image had a "creamy" quality unobtainable with modern lenses.

Ian Grant · Jul 13, 2014

I had a De Vere whole plate monorail for about 30 years very solid, rugged but heavy, I had half plate and 5x4 backs as well.
The lenses need checking, is it a 90mm Polaroid marked lens or 90mm lens cells someones used in a Polaroid shutter, usually the better Agfa 135 & 150mm lenses were Solinar's which were Tessar type lenses.

It's very much a budget outfit now and £200 is perhaps towards the higher end of the total value.

Ian

AgX · Jul 13, 2014

Double Anastigmats due to their (more or less) symmetric design yield the chance, in contrast to the Tessar, to split the lens in two and just use one section to about double focal lenght.

Ian Grant · Jul 13, 2014

AgX said:
Double Anastigmats due to their (more or less) symmetric design yield the chance, in contrast to the Tessar, to split the lens in two and just use one section to about double focal lenght.

Many Tessar type designs were labelled as Anastigmats, Agfa called their Triplet lenses Anastigmats as well, that's why the OP really needs to check the lenses and if possible results from them.

To add to the confusion Kodak used the name Anastigmat for Dialytes and Tessar type lenses as well as triplets.

Ian

Dan Fromm · Jul 13, 2014

Ian Grant said:
Many Tessar type designs were labelled as Anastigmats, Agfa called their Triplet lenses Anastigmats as well, that's why the OP really needs to check the lenses and if possible results from them.

To add to the confusion Kodak used the name Anastigmat for Dialytes and Tessar type lenses as well as triplets.

Ian

Ian, anastigmat is a description. An anastigmat is a lens corrected for spherical aberration, coma and astigmatism. Many design types are anastigmats. Nearly all modern lenses are anastigmats.

Aplanats are not anastigmats. When anastigmats were introduced, makers marked them as such to indicate that they were superior to aplanats. Since nearly all lenses on the market now are anastigmats, the fact that a lens is one is no longer a selling point.

AgX · Jul 13, 2014

Ian Grant said:
Many Tessar type designs were labelled as Anastigmats, Agfa called their Triplet lenses Anastigmats as well, that's why the OP really needs to check the lenses and if possible results from them.

To add to the confusion Kodak used the name Anastigmat for Dialytes and Tessar type lenses as well as triplets.

Ian

Those Agfa LF lenses called Double-Anastigmats were offered (ca.1926-30) parallel to lenses of the same FL called Trilinear and Solinar. From this one could deduce they were true double-anastigmats. and different from the others.

On the other hand double-Anastigmats are more complex than Tessar types, but should not only have deficiencies but also benefits against the latter (as Dan explains below)

You may be right though and that designation was just a marketing idea for certain markets.

EDITED: corrected my nonsense. Thank you, Dan.

Dan Fromm · Jul 13, 2014

AgX, Dagors and such are double anastigmats. Some think dagor types are preferable to tessar types.

Dagor types have four air-glass interfaces, so are less flary than tessar types, which have six. Before coating this made somewhat of a difference even though I've never found my uncoated tessar types very flary.

You may be right and that designation was a marketing idea for certain markets.

Have you forgotten that the original designation for Zeiss' Protar line of lenses was Anastigmat? Zeiss changed the lenses' designation to Protar when other makers started to offer anastigmats.

De vere 4x5 monorail

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