goerz hypergon, has anyone actually used one?

[bicycletricycle]

these things are really interesting! amazing? has anyone used one or does anyone have anything interesting to say about these?

 

[janvanhove]

Glenn, from glennview has an image made with one on his frontpage:

http://www.glennview.com/

PJ

 

[gandolfi]

these things are really interesting! amazing? has anyone used one or does anyone have anything interesting to say about these?

I was offered one once!!

did I buy it? :rolleyes:

there was this amazing shop in Copenhagen then. the owner had a whole section of the shop with stuff he refused to sell.
this was one of them.

then he died, and the widow called me, and offered me everything in that shop.......
being as poor as I am, I just bought a large beautiful studio camera..

I also was offered a STIRN detective camera.. lots of nice stuff.
alas: it all went on auction in Germany..

He told me this about the lens. He used it on a LF camera, and took some images in his garden. His dog was playing around while he exposed.
The result was an image with the back of the dog "running out" of the image to the right, and the front of the dog "coming in" the image from the left..

quite funny to see..

a link:
http://www.phsc.ca/hypergon.html

 

[Mark Sawyer]

Hypergon...

I have a 75mm Hypergon with the star in good working order. While I haven't used it extensively, (hope to rectify that soon...), I have a bit of experience with it as follows.

It's on a modified old Seneca Improved with a bag bellow, no front rail and a very short rear rail. If you get a hypergon, expect to have a camera dedicated just to that lens. (The main reason I haven't used it much is it would mean carrying a second 8x10, and I find hiking with one to be sufficient.)

I custom-made a recessed lensboard for it that includes a cable release to flip the star down during the exposure. I've never heard of this before,but experience proved that doing it by hand puts your hand in the picture, and tugging a little string to do it can move the camera. I have a four-inch-square filter that can be mounted behind the lens; no front filters because of the star, and much smaller than four inches would show the edge of the filter mounted behind.

I use a deep (100 sheet) 5x7 film box as the "lens cap" to begin and end the exposures. The star must spin for about 8-10 (!) times the main exposure value at a 5 second main exposure, but this changes with reciprocity. (Adding ten seconds to a one second exposure is NOT the same as adding one hundred seconds to a ten second exposure.)

The Hypergon only has two f/stops to work with: f/22 for focusing and f/32 for shooting. You have quite good depth of field, and you need it because shutting down one f/stop is much less forgiving than focusing at say, f/6.3, then making the exposure at f/45.

In a contact print, the image is quite sharp in most of the image,but I can see it losing resolution for about the last inch at the corners. It doesn't fall apart completely, but it's definitely noticeable. Much more bothersome to me is the elongation to the corners. The lens does not give the "curving of straight lines" fish-eye effect, but the stretching of objects does not fit my imagery. Someone else might really like the "zooming through the landscape" effect.

The Hypergon's contrast is a little soft, but I'm quite fond of uncoated lenses, and use several others frequently, so I don't find it objectionable.

Other than that, my primary observation is that it's wide. Really wide. I shoot 8x10 sometimes with a 121mm and 125mm, which are pretty wide even when compared to the Wollensak 159mm "Extreme Wide Angle," but the Hypergon is just in it's own little universe for angle of view. I have a hard time visualizing and composing, because there's just so wide a view and the ground glass is so dark. I usually compose outside the camera,and use the gg more to confirm and focus, but the Hypergon crams so much in that it is hard to sort out a composition. Smaller chunks of the world are much easier to deal with. But the Hypergon has its own take on the world.

Using a 35mm camera with a 12.5mm lens would give you an idea of the aesthetics, but not the experience of using the Hypergon or the prints that can be made with one. It might be a good idea before plunking down a couple of thousand or more for one.

I'm looking forward to spending time with it this summer. As I teach more-than-full-time, (60+hours a week), it will have to wait til then. It's a persnickity little lens that will take a devoted stretch of time to get into.

 

[durotomik]

Thanks much Mark,
you helped me a lot (long time ago )

New user of 90mm here, trying to modify my homemade 8x10 (actually using 18x24 cm) camera.

Now just finding the proper infinity BFD, i am afraid first try was something wrong as corners are very mushy. Or when i was clearing the lens (quite dirty due to bad storage) i moved something - but as there are only 2 elements, I doubt it.

For my apologise: it was really dark so i didn't see it on GG and i was in hurry, rain was coming.

I've adjusted distance from film to lens and will try again.

If somebody knows proper back focal length please write but i think according to f32 it doesn't need to be precise.

 

[ic-racer]

Make sure your front and rear standards are parallel. I use a laser.
Imaging how hard it would be trying to get a sharp side-to-side image with a 90mm lens on a Hasselblad holding the lens on with some wood clamps.

 

[durotomik]

Ic-racer,
You're right. This was just an quick improvisation to see if it works at all. I made another test yesterday with different focus and it looks promising.

I just wonder how much is depth of field on 'film side' - i was trying different focus and few mm didn't make any difference on f32.