I'm still not really sure what information you are trying to glean from these catalogs ... prices for complete lenses? I don't really know what kind of complex lenses they would have been selling as off the shelf products, perhaps TV/video lenses and so on. Many of these companies sold "things that you would put on an optical bench" including simple lenses, mirrors, polarizers, mounts, positionable stages, etc, and they also sold "things that industrial companies buy by the thousand" eg fiber optics, coupling lenses, etc.
Keep in mind that there is continuous consolidation and churn in this segment. Toward the end of Ilex, Melles Griot bought Ilex's shutter business and maybe optics, and a while ago some other company swallowed Melles Griot. Newport has been around since maybe the late 60s but some other company owns it now. Newport sells more or less every piece of stuff you might see in an optics lab, their paper catalog (don't know if they still print it) was the size of a telephone book, when phone books were large.
As Dan mentioned below, I'm interested in the lenses, which focal lengths and mounts they were available in, which applications they were intended for, the lens designs and (if possible) the prices as well. I'm helping assemble the biggest database for alt lenses (enlarging, repro, projection, industrial and other specialized lenses):
It's available already at
www.deltalenses.com
Because of the enormous amount of work and research required it's of course still a work-in-progress, but it already contains lots of information.
Apart from a mere data-collection it's also an attempt to bring together people who are interested in adapting those types of lenses to whatever format and to share their experiences, images and knowledge, if they want. One of my main interests is to provide a deeper dive into a couple of (mostly unknown or underrated) lenses/lens families/manufacturers in the form of some articles. The first one (on Agfa) is not finished yet, because it got significantly bigger in scope along the way, but here are the three parts, if you're interested to take a look:
Agfa-Gevaert: Introduction
Agfa-Gevaert: Enlarger Lenses
Agfa-Gevaert: Industrial Lenses
Agfa-Gevaert: Projector Lenses
Thank you very much for sharing your take on those companies - I know that lots of them went belly-up along the way and of course there might be a lot of dead ends along the way, but so far it has been worth it to try most of the times. The range of Boyer lenses + some Rodenstock, Wray and Friedrich optics is certainly interesting enough for what I'm after.
red, Rolyn sold the full range of Boyer taking, process and enlarging lenses. Also Friedrich enlarging (?) lenses. I think the OP is looking for information about the latter.
Indeed - but not exclusively. There are a couple of manufacturers I'm interested in. C. Friedrich just happens to be among the least documented, because it was mostly insignificant in size. Doesn't always mean a lot in terms of quality though! It's quite impressive to see what some of the french manufacturers like Boyer, Angenieux and Som Berthiot produced and how those lenses still provide interesting results. I met someone on flickr who almost uses french lenses exclusively and I'm amazed by the variety there is.
Thanks again to you and Eric Beltrando for your great contributions in preserving a lot of this information!
