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Spencer Portland 9” f/4.5 Soft Focus Lens catalogued for 6.5x8.5” Coverage. Stopped down or close up will cover 8x10. Fast soft focus for portrait or landscape work
Lens is in excellent condition with clean and clear glass. Aperture works perfectly. Custom flange by SK Grimes. Original leather lens cap
$ 1,249 plus shipping. I ship worldwide to PayPal addresses
In 1911, the Spencer Lens Company produced the "Port-land" lens. The name was to denote this lens was useful for both portrait and landscape work. The shorter focal length models are f/4.5 in speed, while longer focal lengths are f/5.6.
The 1915 book, How To Choose and Use a Lens remarks, "The Spencer Port-Land is a…..lens possessing a distinctive character of its own. It gives great softness without losing the drawing, and works nominally at about f/4.5, though few workers can utilize its image at any stop larger than about f/5.6, on account of its giving a number of overlapping images. Its softness is different from that of any other lens."
The March 1921, New Photo-Minature Magazine writes, "The Port-land Lens, F/4.5 (Spencer Lens Co.), is not offered as a general utility lens, being designed for portraiture and landscape work. It is a single achromatic combination of unusual rapidity, with a flat field, corrected for rectilinearity, and gives a diffused or well-defined image at will. This diffusion being most largely the result of spherical aberration, it is controlled by the use of the diaphragm, so that by stopping down the lens a sharp image is obtained. The degree or quality of the diffusion given at the largest aperture, however, is not excessive, giving soft lines and masses, luminous shadows and roundness of delineation without loss of form."
There appears to be at least three manufacturing variations:
1. Early all black and marked "Port-land."
2. Black barrels with aluminum parts and marked "Portland."
3. All black lens and marked "Portland."
According to Mr. Russ Young, Port-land lenses up to 1920 were marked "Port-land" after which the hyphen was dropped
Lens is in excellent condition with clean and clear glass. Aperture works perfectly. Custom flange by SK Grimes. Original leather lens cap
$ 1,249 plus shipping. I ship worldwide to PayPal addresses
In 1911, the Spencer Lens Company produced the "Port-land" lens. The name was to denote this lens was useful for both portrait and landscape work. The shorter focal length models are f/4.5 in speed, while longer focal lengths are f/5.6.
The 1915 book, How To Choose and Use a Lens remarks, "The Spencer Port-Land is a…..lens possessing a distinctive character of its own. It gives great softness without losing the drawing, and works nominally at about f/4.5, though few workers can utilize its image at any stop larger than about f/5.6, on account of its giving a number of overlapping images. Its softness is different from that of any other lens."
The March 1921, New Photo-Minature Magazine writes, "The Port-land Lens, F/4.5 (Spencer Lens Co.), is not offered as a general utility lens, being designed for portraiture and landscape work. It is a single achromatic combination of unusual rapidity, with a flat field, corrected for rectilinearity, and gives a diffused or well-defined image at will. This diffusion being most largely the result of spherical aberration, it is controlled by the use of the diaphragm, so that by stopping down the lens a sharp image is obtained. The degree or quality of the diffusion given at the largest aperture, however, is not excessive, giving soft lines and masses, luminous shadows and roundness of delineation without loss of form."
There appears to be at least three manufacturing variations:
1. Early all black and marked "Port-land."
2. Black barrels with aluminum parts and marked "Portland."
3. All black lens and marked "Portland."
According to Mr. Russ Young, Port-land lenses up to 1920 were marked "Port-land" after which the hyphen was dropped