Recommend a vintage lens for 6x13" close to Sally Mann's 8x10 aesthetic?

[ame01999]

I'm thinking of Sally Mann's early work, when she was still using silver film and paper, and had not entirely embraced damaged lenses and the wet collodion process. More like circa her first monograph (Immediate Family?), when the lens coverage isn't quite large enough for the negative, so edges are much softer, darker, and perhaps even a bit distorted. Modern lenses, to my knowledge, perform fairly evenly over the whole of their image circle, and often come to a very abrupt edge of vignetting. Of course, it's possible some of her view camera movements are causing some of the blurring at the edges?

My AI robot assistant came up with the following list, but I can see that some of these lenses are large enough for 8x10 work (with a price to match), and thus would provide way too much coverage for 6x13 cm.

I didn't have much luck searching for "Dagors" or "Artars" on eBay. There were certainly Kodak Ektars for sale, but I couldn't really judge how old they were and thus how soft they would be at the edges. So far the Voigtländer Heliar seemed to be my go-to pick: very inexpensive.

Thank you so much for your advice.

• Dagors
• Artars
• Early Ektars or Kodak Commercial Ektars

1. Petzval-design lenses: These 19th-century designs are known for their swirly bokeh and soft edges. Modern reproductions like the Lomography Petzval lenses might be easier to find.
2. Voigtländer Heliar: Introduced in 1900, this five-element lens is known for its soft rendering and unique character, especially when used wide open.
3. Wollensak Verito: A soft focus lens that was popular in the early 20th century. It provides a dreamy look with softness increasing towards the edges.
4. Dallmeyer Soft Focus: Another early 20th-century soft focus lens that might give you the edge softness you're looking for.
5. Cooke Series II: These lenses from the early 1900s are known for their softer rendering and can produce interesting effects when used on larger formats than intended.
6. Goerz Dagor: While generally sharp, older versions of this lens can exhibit softness and vignetting when used on larger formats.
7. Kodak Commercial Ektar: Early versions of these lenses, especially when used wide open, can produce softer edges and some vignetting.
8. Schneider Angulon: The older, non-Super versions of these wide-angle lenses can produce significant vignetting and edge softness when used on larger formats.
9. Fujinon SF (Soft Focus): While not as old, these lenses are designed to produce a soft focus effect with controllable intensity3.
10. Rodenstock Imagon: A dedicated soft focus lens that can produce dreamy effects with controllable intensity

Ancillary question: I saw some 120-year old, very long portrait lenses for several thousand dollars, all without shutters. How the heck do you mount a late-19th-century lens into a working shutter, and how much does that specialized work cost?

 

[Dan Daniel]

Can you provide links to the type of images you are looking to emulate? thanks.

 

[ic-racer]

You want verification of the AI Bot output?

 

[Dan Fromm]

Hmm. All Dagors and Artars and Ektars, Commercial or not, are pretty sharp. Now, what is it you want?

If you want to find lenses' claimed coverage, the first post in this https://www.largeformatphotography....to-look-for-information-on-LF-(mainly)-lenses discussion is to a pdf that has links to many lens catalogs. You want lenses that won't cover your intended format. Buy some that have less coverage than 6" x 13" needs (14"/350 mm) , see what they'll do, and sell the ones that don't give you what you want.

Thinking of your intended format, 6"x13" is not a standard format. Which camera do you intend to use? And what about film?

 

[reddesert]

You don't have an "AI robot assistant." A tech company has an AI program that you are providing free training to with your input. It is a little frustrating for the rest of us humans when they are asked to provide evaluations of and free advice on "your" AI robot's output.

Your title says 6x13", which is one reason that responders are a little confused, but your text says 6x13cm, which makes a little more sense for the medium format forum.

In Sally Mann's early silver print 8x10" work, she used a conventional modern LF lens for the format - I thought I remembered it was a 300mm Symmar, but someone on LFPF says it was actually a 300mm Rodenstock Sironar, which is effectively the same thing. Maybe shot wide open. With practice, one can develop one's aesthetic through technique rather than requiring very specific equipment.

 

[Dan Fromm]

rd, 6x13 is also offbeat. 6x12, usually 56 mm x 112 mm but 56 x 120 as interpreted by Linhof, is much more common. 6x13 is an old stereo camera plate size.

 

[Pioneer]

I thought Sally Mann used an 8x10 camera but what do I know?

Maybe find an old Meniscus lens. You can get soft edges. But I am not sure that was the type of lens she was using.

My Dagors, Symmars and Artars are usually pretty sharp though that can vary a bit depending on whether I shoot wide open or not.

But have fun. It can be enjoyable to try different lenses or techniques to get different effects.

 

[retina_restoration]

It just goes to show you how vague and unhelpful AI can be when searching for esoteric recommendations.

 

[Sean Mac]

An inventive person might make good use of the idea found in this thread.....

A new line of Chinese pictorial lenses!

Well, it's like this... We've been covering photo-history in my high school classes lately, and when we looked at the soft focus stuff from the Photo-Secession through Hurrell, I also brought in some stuff made with my vintage and home-made soft focus lenses. The kids liked them, and a few...

www.largeformatphotography.info

 

[koraks]

Ancillary question: I saw some 120-year old, very long portrait lenses for several thousand dollars, all without shutters. How the heck do you mount a late-19th-century lens into a working shutter, and how much does that specialized work cost?

In general, you don't. Either of two options is often used:
1: The lens is used for wet plate/collodion photography, possibly with strobes even, and in place of a shutter, a lens cap (traditionally the photographer's hat) can be used instead.
2: The lens is mounted used in combination with a Sinar Copal shutter or a more rudimentary kind of large format quasi-focal-plane shutter.

In Sally Mann's early silver print 8x10" work, she used a conventional modern LF lens for the format - I thought I remembered it was a 300mm Symmar, but someone on LFPF says it was actually a 300mm Rodenstock Sironar, which is effectively the same thing.

Shot wide open and with slightly imperfect focus, a Symmar-S 300/5.6 creates a pleasing kind of fuzziness especially if the image is contact-printed and not enlarged. Pretty much any lens can be used in this way of course. And there's always the trick with the nylon stockings or the vaseline.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

which format are you shooting? 6x13 cm or 6x13 inches? for 6x13 inches, you could get vignetting/darkened corners/soft edges with something like a Wollensak 159mm f12.5, shot wide open. If you're looking for portraits (6x13 is an odd proportion for portraits, imho, but I don't know what you're trying to do, so I could be talking completely out of my ass there), the Kodak 305mm soft-focus portrait lens would be a good option - it gets super-smushy wide open, and retains a smoothness and glow stopped down while picking up substantial sharpness. I use its big brother the 405 on my 8x10 for studio portraits. As an example, here's a portrait I did with it: Gabriel
You could go with a shorter-than standard Heliar, like a 240mm, but that will fully illuminate 8x10, just lose resolution in the corners. You could look for an early Voigtlander petzval but those are going to be spendy.