Question about Wollensak Velostigmat "Focus" Series II

Actually, Dan, I think you got it. Here, from http://www.photographyhistory.com/CS07/bellpanorama.html , is what I think is the lens and shutter combination I have:

Most importantly, the camera now came with several choices of more advanced Wollensak multispeed shutters, such as the Regno and Victo, and the accompanying Wollensak lenses were incrementally sharper than what preceded them. The basic Wollensak wide-angle symmetrical, with a maximum allowable diaphragm setting of f12, still suffered from slightly uneven exposure in the image corners if the aperture was too large, but a later more expensive option for the more demanding photographer was the outstanding Wollensak Velostigmat Wide Angle Series III. It boasted truly balanced exposure across the entire panoramic frame at its maximum aperture of f9.5, and that in turn translated to much faster and practical exposure times.

Click to expand...

Emphasis mine.

There were NO 8 1/4" Soft Focus Series II Velostigmat's, so that solves that dilemma. The Velo was in production for a long long long time. It is like a Volkswagen bug in the sense that if you park a 1955 model next to a 1974 model, you'll find lots of little differences. Black barrels, chrome barrels etc. etc. etc.

Now, if you want a poor man's soft focus, the Velo is a great little lens to play with. Here's a shot where I used an 8 1/4" Velo and actually took the rear glass out of the barrel and flipped it around backwards.


Here's a page where I did a different mod, also to an 8 1/4" Velo. I physically spaced the front element .032 inch forward to accomplish what the bigger brothers do with their diffusion thread.