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Bobezergailis
Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 5
Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
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 Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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I have a rather large mystery lens. It appears extremely sharp. It is a
Carl Meyer, Video Stigmat 200mm, f2.9 to f22 with iris, no shutter. It is marked on the barrel "Burke & James", and came with a very large mounting ring. Itself it is 3.25" across the front. I can find no history on this particular optic. Any info appreciated. |
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glennfromwy
Joined: 29 Nov 2001
Posts: 903
Location: S.W. Wyoming
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| Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 5:12 pm Post subject: |
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It sounds like an old TV camera lens. The name Carl Meyer is one of many that Burke and James used to sell. It was used on surplus lenses and lenses they sourced from various manufacturers. It sounded like a well known maker but not. Burke and James, or Bunk and Junk, as some employees refered to it, was a major seller of rebranded equipment. Your lens could well be a good high end item from a major maker. It's anyone's guess.
_________________
Glenn
"Wyoming - Where everybody is somebody else's weirdo" |
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Bobezergailis
Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 5
Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 6:32 pm Post subject: |
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On 2005-05-05 10:12, glennfromwy wrote:
It sounds like an old TV camera lens. The name Carl Meyer is one of many that Burke and James used to sell. It was used on surplus lenses and lenses they sourced from various manufacturers. It sounded like a well known maker but not. Burke and James, or Bunk and Junk, as some employees refered to it, was a major seller of rebranded equipment. Your lens could well be a good high end item from a major maker. It's anyone's guess. |
Perhaps a 1930s television camera lens. That was one of my guesses. From back when a TV camera was a quite different device from what we think of today. The fast speed, and large size, plus the unusual resolution and sharpness. Burke and James actually had a double life, producing some very specialized items for the government as well as for the private sector. So it is difficult to find history on some rare items. I believe that similar to some other manufacturers at that time period, eg. Kodak, and Elgeet, some of the failed bits that fell short of stricter standards ended up recycled into the consumer marketplace under familiar names. Of course the latter, lower quality, items are what tend to be better known with Elgeet and Burke and James, but the consumer product marketplace is always full of over priced junk. That has been the game from the beginning.
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David A. Goldfarb
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 142
Location: New York City
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| Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 10:16 pm Post subject: |
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The famous maker was Hugo Meyer, Goerlitz.
B&J tried to capitalize on the name with "Carl Meyer," not unlike those cheap plastic "Cannon" cameras on eBay (as opposed to those expensive plastic "Canon" cameras from Canon). |
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melquart
Joined: 12 Mar 2005
Posts: 11
Location: ITALY
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| Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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Hi,
I think that this lens it's like the Pentac 8 inch lens designed from John Henry Dallmeyer. It's an Aerial lens, this is the reason why it has f2.9: it's a fast lens. Probably some manufacturer rebuild the housing of this lens and named it with new brand. I'm a bit sure about this as I recently bought, I'm still waiting it, an aerial british army lens that it seems to be the same: JHD 8" f2.9. The seller listed it as a repro lens but I'm sure that this is a mistake. |
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Bobezergailis
Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 5
Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 12:47 pm Post subject: |
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On 2005-06-17 14:12, melquart wrote:
Hi,
I think that this lens it's like the Pentac 8 inch lens designed from John Henry Dallmeyer. It's an Aerial lens, this is the reason why it has f2.9: it's a fast lens. Probably some manufacturer rebuild the housing of this lens and named it with new brand. I'm a bit sure about this as I recently bought, I'm still waiting it, an aerial british army lens that it seems to be the same: JHD 8" f2.9. The seller listed it as a repro lens but I'm sure that this is a mistake.
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It might be a Dallmeyer Pentec design adopted by B&J. However, the stories as to B&J remounting Dallmeyer lenses and selling them as cheap surplus after WWII appear falsified. The one I have has a mounting ring and body made of aeronautical aluminum alloy and I do not believe it is a remount. So the "video" name on it probably is original. After all there was no market for a video lens like that as such, in the 1940s. It certainly was not used that way in the civilian market. It was most likely made for use in planse on video cameras, during WWII. What other way to transmit reconnaisance from planes that were often not expected to return home ? Audio transmission was too interceptable and too inaccurate. Video was better. Also explains why TV advanced to suddenly and quickly after WWII. Spin off technology from the aerial recon and war efforts. Now if I could only find out more about the camera . I found only one listing of something, with the specifications expurgated and no indication of age, that had been sold military surplus with that type of lens mentionned with it. Nothing else. Interesting too that the camera had a manually adjustable aperture, but hen again, it was likely mostly used wide open. The beyond extreme resolution also makes sense then. There was no room for losses at the lens, when the imaging system was as limited as the best video transmission ended up being at that time. The image would likely have been monitored live, but some might have been taped. I wonder if any still exist ?
Bob
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bertsaunders
Joined: 20 May 2001
Posts: 577
Location: Bakersfield California
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 5:13 pm Post subject: |
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Video/TV in the 30's and forties??????
Radar and Sonar were still experiments during WWII, and not really all that sophisticated until after the war..TV was around in the late 30's, but output broadcasts were limited to only a few selected people, and 35 mm was an infant in those days, not widly accepted yet! Very few combat photos were taken in color in WWII, and the most popular camera for use in the field......
...YEA...Speeds/Crowns! |
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Dan Fromm
Joined: 14 May 2001
Posts: 2146
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 6:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
On 2005-06-26 05:47, Bobezergailis wrote:
It might be a Dallmeyer Pentec design adopted by B&J.
After all there was no market for a video lens like that as such, in the 1940s. It certainly was not used that way in the civilian market. It was most likely made for use in planse on video cameras, during WWII. What other way to transmit reconnaisance from planes that were often not expected to return home ?
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Um, Bob, I think you're badly mistaken about military use of video. At least for the RAF, whose photoreconnaissance activities and equipment and even some exploits ae reported in Roy Conyers Nesbit's book Eye Of The RAF, video began displacing film in the '90s, not earlier.
Auto exposure aerial cameras came in somewhat earlier, no later than the early '60s. I have a number of ex-RAF lenses, some of around that vintage, and have dismantled a couple of ex-RAF cameras. For most of my lenses, the AE linkages were add-ons, so once a lens has been extracted from its mount its hard to tell whether the camera it came from had AE.
There's a simple way to tell if your lens is a Pentac formula. Count reflections from a single light source. There should be five, four strong and one weak from in front of the diaphragm and three, two strong and one weak from behind the diaphragm. The weak reflections, which come from glass-cement-glass interfaces, may be hard to see.
I have practically no experience with TV lenses except for the superlative Canon 100/2 TV-16, which I used on my S8 Beaulieus. It is generally believed -- see The Lens Collector's Vade Mecum -- that lenses made for TV cameras were optimized for high contrast at quite low resolution and are poorly suited for use on film. Even worse for those of us who want to reuse them on larger formats, lense for TV cameras were made to cover a very small area.
Good luck, have fun, |
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Bobezergailis
Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 5
Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:11 pm Post subject: |
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On 2005-06-26 10:13, bertsaunders wrote:
Video/TV in the 30's and forties??????
Radar and Sonar were still experiments during WWII, and not really all that sophisticated until after the war..TV was around in the late 30's, but output broadcasts were limited to only a few selected people, and 35 mm was an infant in those days, not widly accepted yet! Very few combat photos were taken in color in WWII, and the most popular camera for use in the field......
...YEA...Speeds/Crowns!
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Seems to be enough to indicate video cameras, better than those you mention from the 1930s, were in some planes during WWII.
Bob |
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Bobezergailis
Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 5
Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:42 pm Post subject: |
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On 2005-06-26 11:46, Dan Fromm wrote:
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On 2005-06-26 05:47, Bobezergailis wrote:
It might be a Dallmeyer Pentec design adopted by B&J.
After all there was no market for a video lens like that as such, in the 1940s. It certainly was not used that way in the civilian market. It was most likely made for use in planse on video cameras, during WWII. What other way to transmit reconnaisance from planes that were often not expected to return home ?
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Um, Bob, I think you're badly mistaken about military use of video. At least for the RAF, whose photoreconnaissance activities and equipment and even some exploits ae reported in Roy Conyers Nesbit's book Eye Of The RAF, video began displacing film in the '90s, not earlier.
Auto exposure aerial cameras came in somewhat earlier, no later than the early '60s. I have a number of ex-RAF lenses, some of around that vintage, and have dismantled a couple of ex-RAF cameras. For most of my lenses, the AE linkages were add-ons, so once a lens has been extracted from its mount its hard to tell whether the camera it came from had AE.
There's a simple way to tell if your lens is a Pentac formula. Count reflections from a single light source. There should be five, four strong and one weak from in front of the diaphragm and three, two strong and one weak from behind the diaphragm. The weak reflections, which come from glass-cement-glass interfaces, may be hard to see.
I have practically no experience with TV lenses except for the superlative Canon 100/2 TV-16, which I used on my S8 Beaulieus. It is generally believed -- see The Lens Collector's Vade Mecum -- that lenses made for TV cameras were optimized for high contrast at quite low resolution and are poorly suited for use on film. Even worse for those of us who want to reuse them on larger formats, lense for TV cameras were made to cover a very small area.
Good luck, have fun,
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You are not quite correct. Although I cannot find
the exact information for the reconnaissance camera version, which I am sure existed early in WWII, here
is a link to some solid information. 450 line video was available before the war began. Using an iconoscope. The GB4 bomb had a video camera on board, and was guided from a B17 by means of the video image from an Iconoscope model 1846. Pictures of the devices are on the site:
The lens on the GB4 might have been similar to the Dallmeyer Pentec lens, but I think the Dallmeyer was used for recon, not for video guided bombs.
http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/zworykin.htm
Zworykin was a Russian scientist who emigrated to America and was working for Westinghouse, It was his invention.
Bob |
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bertsaunders
Joined: 20 May 2001
Posts: 577
Location: Bakersfield California
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 10:21 pm Post subject: |
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bobezer,
Charles P. Ginsburg led the research team at Ampex Corp in developing the first practical videotape recorder (VTR) in 1951, the first live images from television cameras by converting the information into electrical impulses and saving the information on magnetic tape. Ampex sold the first VTR for $50,000 in 1956. The first VcassetteR or VCR were sold by Sony in 1971.
Dont believe they used video from 41 to 45, hadnt been invented yet, not even in my days in the AF during the Korean war! First TV I ever saw was in 1951/52!!
Found this info by searching for "history of video recorders-video tape and camera"
Bert
[ This Message was edited by: bertsaunders on 2005-06-26 15:22 ] |
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Dan Fromm
Joined: 14 May 2001
Posts: 2146
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 11:08 pm Post subject: |
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On 2005-06-26 15:21, bertsaunders wrote:
bobezer,
Charles P. Ginsburg led the research team at Ampex Corp in developing the first practical videotape recorder (VTR) in 1951, the first live images from television cameras by converting the information into electrical impulses and saving the information on magnetic tape. Ampex sold the first VTR for $50,000 in 1956. The first VcassetteR or VCR were sold by Sony in 1971.
Dont believe they used video from 41 to 45, hadnt been invented yet, not even in my days in the AF during the Korean war! First TV I ever saw was in 1951/52!!
Found this info by searching for "history of video recorders-video tape and camera"
Bert
[ This Message was edited by: bertsaunders on 2005-06-26 15:22 ]
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Bert, IIRC commercial TV broadcasting began in the US around 1947, in the very late '30s in the UK. Tiny sets, few broadcasters, tiny audiences. At the time you and I first saw TV it was just starting to take off in a big way.
Regards,
Dan |
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Joe Koski
Joined: 09 Feb 2004
Posts: 39
Location: Southwest USA
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 1:08 am Post subject: |
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Some not exactly on the subject, but possibly relevent comments. Before video tape appeared in the mid-50s, television recordings were photographic. Called Kinescope recordings, they were basically 16mm movies of the cathode ray tube image (negative to simplify processing?) run, as I recall, at 30fps in order to stay in sync with the NTSC frame rate.
Yes, AMPEX invented video tape in the early 50s. The story is that without annoucing video tape, they held a meeting for broadcasters, taped it, and then replayed the tape as everyone left, astounding all those present. |
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