Jim
When studio portraitists ventured outdoors a hundred years ago,
they gleefully ditched their brass honkers and embraced Tessars, and the other anastigmats.
First, they could focus and shoot wide open. Second, if they needed to 'soften' the image, they simply racked the lens out to put the offending sharpness between the subject and the camera.
It seems the prejudice against Tessars (and B&L were as good or better then Jena at any given time) began in the Internet Era, when lots of folks could talk about stuff, without ever seeing the resuts.
The reasoning against Tessars goes like this:
A hard to find lens has to be better than a common lens, yes ?
After all, if a Tessar was any good, then why did they make so many of them ???
Forty two ears ago, I was a teenage kid helping out a retired master photographer of the old school. I was going out with a TLR to make some snaps, and he tossed me a roll of Verichrome Pan. I turned my nose up at it, that crap film I had used in a Brownie. I said, "I'm not going to use that stuff, I'm going to get some Plus-X !"
The old man sighed, and asked, "If Kodak is going to sell plastic cameras with a plastic lens that everybody has to get good pictures with, are they going to use their worst film or their BEST film ?" I felt suitably idiotic, accepted the VP120, remembered my manners and thanked him, and once I began to respect the film began to get great images from VP.
That's the same thing as the Tessar. Great lens. Wonderful portrait lens. Great find, Jim.
