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Looking for info: Wollensak 7 1/4 in. 4.5 velostigmatic
My son picked up one of these this evening. Hard to find info about
it. Betax #3 shutter, uncoated. Came with an old Speed Graphic. Anyone got a link to some info? TIA, Collin KC8TKA |
#2
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Looking for info: Wollensak 7 1/4 in. 4.5 velostigmatic
On Apr 25, 10:02 pm, Cheesehead wrote:
My son picked up one of these this evening. Hard to find info about it. Betax #3 shutter, uncoated. Came with an old Speed Graphic. Anyone got a link to some info? TIA, Collin KC8TKA It may be a 7 1/2 inch. Lower digit is difficult to discern. Series II. |
#3
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Looking for info: Wollensak 7 1/4 in. 4.5 velostigmatic
Google pondered mightily and spake thus:
http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0031vq http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00EUBO http://www.kyphoto.com/classics/foru...tml?1166351030 I can't make head or tail of it - it is a soft focus lens except when it isn't, though when it isn't it often is. Maybe. -- Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio Darkroom Automation: F-Stop Timers, Enlarging Meters http://www.darkroomautomation.com/index.htm n o lindan at ix dot netcom dot com |
#4
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Looking for info: Wollensak 7 1/4 in. 4.5 velostigmatic
"Cheesehead" wrote in message oups.com... My son picked up one of these this evening. Hard to find info about it. Betax #3 shutter, uncoated. Came with an old Speed Graphic. Anyone got a link to some info? TIA, Collin KC8TKA Wollensak used the trade name Velostigmat as a standard name for their high quality lenses before about 1946. At that time it was changed to Raptar with a large publicity campaign. The focal length is a bit long for a press camera lens but is about right if the camera was used for pictorial purposes where some degree of camera movement was desired. The Camera Eccentric web site, at http://www.cameraeccentric.com/index.html has a number of Wollensak catalogues on it. The earlier catalogues do not show lens diagrams but they are shown in some of the late ones. For instance, the 1957 catalogue shows the Series II Raptar which is the same lens as the Series II Velostigmat, Both are Tessar types. Your lens should give the series along with the lens name. Wollensak lenses are rather variable in quality. Some are very fine but the mid to late 1940's lenses sold by Wollensak as Raptar and made under contract for Graflex as the Optar are dogs with what appears to be a serious design problem. This also applies to the f/4.5 series of Enlarging Raptar lenses. I have some earlier Velostigmat lenses which are quite good and the Wollensak Telephoto lenses are very good. -- --- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA |
#5
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Looking for info: Wollensak 7 1/4 in. 4.5 velostigmatic
In article et,
Richard Knoppow wrote: Wollensak lenses are rather variable in quality. Some are very fine but the mid to late 1940's lenses sold by Wollensak as Raptar and made under contract for Graflex as the Optar are dogs with what appears to be a serious design problem. This also applies to the f/4.5 series of Enlarging Raptar lenses. I have some earlier Velostigmat lenses which are quite good and the Wollensak Telephoto lenses are very good. Curiously, the lenses supplied by Wollensak in the auto-diaphragm mount for the Graflex Super D SLR are almost indistinguishable from the Kodak Ektar supplied at a slightly higher price in the same mount. These lenses seem to be differently coated from other contemporary Wollensak lenses and the cell mounts -- hard to get at inside the Super-D diaphragm assembly -- don't look like those on other Raptar/Optar lenses either. I was told by someone who said he'd spoken with Kingslake about it that all the lenses were in fact built from the Kodak design, so it would seem that Wollensak either _could_ do good construction and quality assurance when they really wanted to, or gave up and actually had Kodak build the lenses they shipped, too (not implausible since Graflex probably wanted a "standard" and "premium" lens for the Super-D to give some upsell potential for well-heeled buyers). I suppose it's also possible that if Kodak designed the lenses and did the final steps of production (which seems likely from the look of the coatings) this was simply adequate to address whatever the real problem at Wollensak was in those days -- either design, QA, or both. Certainly other 1930s-1940s Wollensak lenses, in my experience, are junk. -- Thor Lancelot Simon "All of my opinions are consistent, but I cannot present them all at once." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On The Social Contract |
#6
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Looking for info: Wollensak 7 1/4 in. 4.5 velostigmatic
"Thor Lancelot Simon" wrote in message ... In article et, Richard Knoppow wrote: Wollensak lenses are rather variable in quality. Some are very fine but the mid to late 1940's lenses sold by Wollensak as Raptar and made under contract for Graflex as the Optar are dogs with what appears to be a serious design problem. This also applies to the f/4.5 series of Enlarging Raptar lenses. I have some earlier Velostigmat lenses which are quite good and the Wollensak Telephoto lenses are very good. Curiously, the lenses supplied by Wollensak in the auto-diaphragm mount for the Graflex Super D SLR are almost indistinguishable from the Kodak Ektar supplied at a slightly higher price in the same mount. These lenses seem to be differently coated from other contemporary Wollensak lenses and the cell mounts -- hard to get at inside the Super-D diaphragm assembly -- don't look like those on other Raptar/Optar lenses either. I was told by someone who said he'd spoken with Kingslake about it that all the lenses were in fact built from the Kodak design, so it would seem that Wollensak either _could_ do good construction and quality assurance when they really wanted to, or gave up and actually had Kodak build the lenses they shipped, too (not implausible since Graflex probably wanted a "standard" and "premium" lens for the Super-D to give some upsell potential for well-heeled buyers). I suppose it's also possible that if Kodak designed the lenses and did the final steps of production (which seems likely from the look of the coatings) this was simply adequate to address whatever the real problem at Wollensak was in those days -- either design, QA, or both. Certainly other 1930s-1940s Wollensak lenses, in my experience, are junk. -- Thor Lancelot Simon I have a 190mm, f/5.6 Optar in my Graflex Super-D. It is indeed an excellent lens with none of the faults found in the f/4.5 Optar/Raptar lenses. It could well be that Wollensak used the Kodak design, there is probably no way to know at this late date. Certainly Wollensak had the ability to make the lenses physically. They were also one of the first lens makers to routinely hard coat their lenses. The poor design of the Raptar is a puzzle to me because they are _so_ bad. Although very sharp in the center they appear to have either a very great deal of coma or of oblique spherical aberration (they look much the same), so that the image away from the center is not sharp even when stopped down to f/32. In comparison the Kodak Ektar and Zeiss Tessar of similar speed are sharp to the corners at around f/9. Oblique spherical is an inherent problem with Tessar lenses. Evidently, something got miscalculated. I don't think its from manufacturing variation because I've observed it on every one of these lenses I've had access to and it also seems to be the same for both the 135mm and 101mm versions. The Enlarging Raptar seems to have a similar problem. When I set up a darkroom again some years ago I obtained a 50mm Enlarging Raptar in excellent condition. I was puzzled as to why the prints didn't look right until I replaced it with an Enlarging Rokkor and shortly after a Schneider Componon-S. The E-Rokkor is BTW a very good lens. I have a couple of Enlarging Ektars. Its very hard to seen any difference between the 75mm Ektar and an 80mm Componon. As far as Wollensak is concerned I remember their lenses having a poor reputation. Curiously, they were in general not cheap. OTOH, Wollensak shutters are excellent. -- --- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA |
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