Soft Focus with a 45cm APO Tessar

[jimgalli]

I guess they're sort of ubiquitous. Somehow I ended up with 2 of them. They don't seem to be in demand, having checked ebay completed sales, none of the $249 ones sold but KEH dumped one for $59 bucks. I don't get it. It's a dazzling lens for 8X10 and larger photography. People worry worry worry about how much money it'll cost to shoot 11X14. Sheesh. $59 bucks??? Sleeper lens.

Anyways, today I was cleaning up 45cm APO Tessar #2 which came in a junk box of old lenses, a box lot, and it cleaned up spiffy, but then I was curious and put it on the 2D with full plate back on, and took the front group off. The rear group alone is as fine a soft focus achromatic meniscus as I've seen anywhere. 11" focus and f5.6. I can't help myself, I get so tickled watching a Hyperion break the $3k ++ price mark, and I'm happy it did, because I've got one, but if you've got a worthless old 45cm APO Tessar go take the front off and make some softy pictures.

 

[ags2mikon]

What is the construction of that lens? Is it a 4e 4g?

 

[jimgalli]

What is the construction of that lens? Is it a 4e 4g?

It is a tessar as the name implies. 1+1 up front with 2 cemented elements at the rear. So 4e 3g

 

[ags2mikon]

Have you ever tried that with any other tessars? I have a 12" ilex and a 300mm fujinar I may want to try out. 180-200mm? Might work on 6x6?

 

[jimgalli]

Any tessar has this capability. I have the rear group of a common as dirt 7" Ilex tessar glued to a hollowed out Nikon body cap that I put onto a Nikon bellows and shoot beautiful soft focus color images with my Nikon D7000

 

[jimgalli]

The ratio of rear cell focus seems to be about 8:5. Thus a 12” Tessar might have rear group that can focus at 7.5” or so. The 18 cm f9 is nice because the 11” focus is excellent for larger formats and f9 is compact enough to use the barrel easily.

 

[jimgalli]

Here are some images finally to illustrate the APO Tessar in soft focus mode. 2 views. In both views soft was wide open at f5.6. In the closer view I closed down to f16 1/2 for the sharper view and in the wider view I stopped down to f22 1/2 for the sharper image. Wide open is probably too soft to be very useful. I focused on the Ford script on the radiator shell in all views. Love to hear what your thoughts are.. Maybe not too soft wide open at all. I like them together on the page.