My new toy ....

[John Bartley]

... all I have to get now is a cart to carry it on.

 

[bobfowler]

... all I have to get now is a cart to carry it on.

WOW! Does that say what I think it says? 20inches f/6.3?!?!

Get a forklift!

 

[avandesande]

Is that a leica mount?

 

[John Bartley]

Is that a leica mount?

Yashica screw mount .....?

 

[smieglitz]

You sir have built the better mousetrap.

 

[Richard Wasserman]

I just received a 360mm convertible Symmar which I thought was big until I saw this. You win!! What camera are you using your toy on?

Richard Wasserman

 

[JohnArs]

Hi John
You will need a very strong and sturdy camera or you get in troubles!
You have to show some pictures done with it!
Its a killer lens, it can kill your tripod if not strong enough or break the front of your camera;-))

 

[Kino]

... all I have to get now is a cart to carry it on.

John,

Can your lens come out and play with my lens? ;-)

Gonna need a few adapter rings to get it on the Zenit...

 

[John Bartley]

Kino,

Whatever you put that on, make sure it has rear focussing Otherwise it's a long walk around to the front ...

I don't have a camera to put mine on (yet). Truth is, I was at a porch sale (house clearing - leaving town) and this was available cheap, so ....

The first job will be to figure out what it covers and then either use, sell or trade.

cheers

 

[bobfowler]

The first job will be to figure out what it covers and then either use, sell or trade.

Well, it covers a good portion of your desk, that's for sure...

 

[noseoil]

John, hope I'm not too late. Be very careful! I wouldn't put it past Jim to send some of his little green friends from Area 51 in a ship at night to make a raid for this lens. Heck, they might just want to take a look at their home if they're lonely and this would be a good way to do it.

Looks like you need a big Packard shutter for this one. Let us know about coverage. It might just do 20 x 24, so there may be a way to join sheets of that "roll film" you like to use for an image or two. For that matter, you might use a long film holder and do some interesting banquet shots of your province at dinner. tim

 

[John Bartley]

Well, it covers a good portion of your desk, that's for sure...

Hehehe - it came with a cone and figuring it weighs more than the desk, I thought maybe the pair would be a good base for a monopod coffee table

 

[Kino]

Kino,

Whatever you put that on, make sure it has rear focussing Otherwise it's a long walk around to the front ...

I don't have a camera to put mine on (yet). Truth is, I was at a porch sale (house clearing - leaving town) and this was available cheap, so ....

The first job will be to figure out what it covers and then either use, sell or trade.

cheers

John,

I hear you there! I got mine from a surplus auction; think it came off a Vietnam-era recon plane, but was thinking of putting it on a set of rails and putting a Crown Graphic behind it with a cardboard "lens tube" to see what happened - OR - make a swing lens panoramic camera to take 9" Aerial film! I think it would take a Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine to swing the lens!

More than likely, it will simply sit on my shelf and wait for "roundtuits' -- I never seem to get around to it...

 

[vet173]

You showed me yours, I'll show you mine. It's a Hugo Meyer & Co - Georlitz 480cm F-5.6 DRPD Dr Rudolph. convertable to 830cm F-11. I picked it up for tradin stock. Except for the bubbles in the glass it's clean. ( I know about the bubbles )

 

[Kino]

Sweet!

 

[ReallyBigCameras]

Hey, this is fun. A huge lens thread to go with the huge camera thread Jim started.

My biggest current lens is a 48cm f4.5 Universal Heliar that weighs between 13 and 14 lbs.

The biggest lens I ever owned was a HUGE and beautiful polished brass Dallmeyer lens from the 1860s that weighed 27 lbs. I bought it off eBay, and while there were a few pictures of the lens I had no idea how big it was until it arrived and I opened the shipping crate. It was an amazing looking piece, with a big polished brass built-in lens shade it looked more like an antigue cannon than a camera lens. I sold it to a guy who used it to make mammoth glass plate portraits using an 18x22 camera.

Kerry

 

[rbarker]

Well, if we're opening our (lens) drawers, here's my big one.

Almost fills up the 158mm Toyo board, and I can't focus it very close.

Nice find, John. Hope you're able to put it to good use soon.

 

[epatsellis]

Gee,
I feel like a eunuch at a porn star convention, best I've got here is a 360 5.6 componon and a 360 5.6 symmar coming soon (hopefully)

erie

 

[Struan Gray]

John, your lens was probably made for a Williamson F24 5x5" aerial camera. The RAF used them in the 30s and during WWII, but I suppose yours may have come from the RCAF so dating it might be tough. There's a picture of three of the cameras on this page:

Dead Link Removed

I have one of the lenses from the successor F52 camera (the two big ones on the right): a 36" f6.8 beast of a telephoto. Apparently there was a 42" lens as well. Despite good intentions I still haven't got round to using mine: it will require a fair bit of custom machine work to integrate it into my camera as it's too heavy to just screw to a lenboard.

 

[Soeren]

Hmm I wonder what Sigmund Freud would make out of this
Cheers Søren

 

[Claire Senft]

I must admit that viewing this item gives me the impresssion that the finish on this item is so rough as to almost make me feel it is used and not new.

 

[John Bartley]

I must admit that viewing this item gives me the impresssion that the finish on this item is so rough as to almost make me feel it is used and not new.

Nawwww - it's gotta be your eyesight - you gettin' old ??

 

[Kino]

Hmm I wonder what Sigmund Freud would make out of this
Cheers Søren

Well, you know... sometimes a large telephoto lens is just a large telephoto lens...

 

[vet173]

John, your lens was probably made for a Williamson F24 5x5" aerial camera. The RAF used them in the 30s and during WWII, but I suppose yours may have come from the RCAF so dating it might be tough. There's a picture of three of the cameras on this page:

Dead Link Removed

I have one of the lenses from the successor F52 camera (the two big ones on the right): a 36" f6.8 beast of a telephoto. Apparently there was a 42" lens as well. Despite good intentions I still haven't got round to using mine: it will require a fair bit of custom machine work to integrate it into my camera as it's too heavy to just screw to a lenboard.

What is the coverage of the lenses you speak of? I haven't mounted this lens yet, cuz it's a lensboard ripper. A little over 5.5lbs. I have pointed it up to a cealing light and focused on a white card and I'm almost 45 degrees off axis and still haven't run out of room. Looks like it would work on a 20x24 camera. When mentioned on the LF forum I was told coverage was similar to a dagor. I can live with that. I really want to try it out as the glass is exceptionally clean. There are no RCAF markings on it as I would expect to see if it was a military lens.

 

[Struan Gray]

vet, your lens isn't an aerial lens, it's the original Plasmat, the granddaddy of modern APO-symmars, APO-sironars, Nikkor-Ws and process lenses like the G-clarons and APO-Gerogons. There's a good thread on the lens type at LF.info here:

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/497516.html

The conventional wisdom is that plasmats have slightly narrower coverage than Dagors, but are sharper in that coverage range and usable at wider apertures. Modern era plasmats range from 72-80 degrees depending on the complexity of their construction, while Dagors are typically quoted as 75-80° lenses, reaching 90° at f45.

That said, for any vintage lens like yours the vagaries of time and the process control in the original construction will probably make general statements moot. Sandy King once posted to usenet that his 300 mm vintage plasmat had as much usable coverage as his Dagors:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec...._frm/thread/c4b5a9db1972e8b5/5385c162ffb2babe

To cover 20x24 at infinity you need a smidgin under 80°, so for contact printing I would say your lens will almost certainly cover, albeit with little movements.

The UK Ross/Dallmeyer/Wray aerial lenses usually have a broad arrow on them. Mine came from the Swedish airforce, but still has one. The smaller cameras were 5x5", the larger ones 9x9", so it is safe to assume that the lenses will cover those sizes with a high degree of sharpness at infinity. Unlike modern lenses they don't seem to have agressive field stops to vignette the projected light to the official image circle, but I would be very surprised if the telephoto lenses covered much beyond 45-50°. It is a rare lens that won't cover it's focal length well enough for contact printing, but unlike Dagors and Plasmats I wouldn't expect the coverage to grow much as you stop down. Since the aperture on mine is limited to f16 or wider, and since I want to use it on 4x5, that's not exactly a problem.