Narrowing Down a Petzval Lens

Guys and dolls,

Any lens with brass on it starts my confusion: what's the FL? Aperture? Is that gonna cover? How do you know?

I'm in search mode, looking for a Petzval lens that will give me that centre sharpness and the abrupt in-focus/out-of-focus look with a hint of swirl. Looking for a lens that will do this on 8x10. Mostly film with the possibility of going back to wet plate one day.

My research so far tells me that it would need to be a fast lens, f/4 or faster, and that it'd have to cover whole plate in order for the swirls to start on 8x10. But I'm not fussy about the swirls.

I'm not into the brand-name lenses; if I could find a no-name that did the job, I'd be happy, but there's scant information on those.

So can anyone point me in a proper search direction? Somewhere I can go read about these lenses?
There's so much stuff up on eBay but I don't know what to make of most of it, and it's not practical for me to start testing Petzval lenses for coverage and rendition. I'll be broke fast.

Thanks in advance.

Whole plate lenses generally don't cover 8x10. I think you need a 14+ inch one for that. (I own an 8x10, do wet plate, and own a 10 inch & 12 inch Petzval.)



Kent in SD

But if the lens almost covered, it would reveal the swirls, correct?

Check the vintage catalogs at http://piercevaubel.com/cam/catalogsall.htm
The supply house catalogs will have more on lens than camera manufacturer catalogs.

Thank you, what a great resource!

Looking at a Ross advert from 1898 their No 4 Portrait (Petzval) lens for 10"x8" is a 15" focal length, 4½" diameter. That's around f3.3 Their 3a is 4" diameter and 12" FL so around f3 but only covers Half plate,

My own Petzval is an 8½" 2¼" diameter (front glass) so f3.8 at Infinity it covers 5x4 and even for portraits has plenty of swirl that drops as you stop down - with Waterhouse stops. I was lucky and picked mine up at a Flea market, actually the seller had kept it aside for me, it looked terrible and was very cheap.






When the Rapid Rectilinear lens almost finished the market for Petzval lens many manufacturers sold of existing stock as Projection lenses. However later Projection Petzvals have no slots for Waterhouse stops, but few would be of long enough FL to cover 10x8. Petzvals were still sold in small numbers as portrait lenses into the early 20th C.

Your problem will be there's a high demand for longer FL Petzvals particularly in the US and they fetch high prices.

BTW my Petzval cleaned up very nicely it had been stored in a farmers barn



Ian

Thanks, Ian. Indeed these lenses are commanding ridiculously high prices, thanks in part to a resurgence of wet plate work.
You definitely got lucky with that flea market buy!