Graflex.org

[JBish130]

Picked up a couple lenses. Would like to know if anyone is familiar with these, and if so what is the general opinion?

1: Bausch & Lomb Zeiss Tessar Series 1c

2: Wollensak 10 1/4" f/10 - f/90

Thanks in advance!

_________________
Jeff Bishop

"It's light and nothing more."

[Les]

B&L Tessar 1c The workhorse of the, well at least the photo journalist world from 1903 until after WWII. With some still made into the 1980s. Variations on this lens with varying degrees of success are the Kodak Anastigmat, the Velostigmat, Raptar, several Ektars & Optars, the list goes on and on. Tends to be soft around the edges and doesn't cover a lot, but it was popular becuase it was fast for it's size and weight.

Wally 10 1/4 f10. Another tessar design but this time optized for graphic arts work. Much slower but then it was only taking pictures of still objects. Other graphic arts lenses are probably sharper or better color corrected but you'd need a good loupe to see it. Most of these are optimzed for close distances, you'll have to test your lens to see how it does for objects beyond say 6ft.

Think of the lenses it took to get an image from the street and into a newspaper:
There's the taking lens, that gets the image onto the film.
The enlarging lens, that gets the image onto paper
and the
Graphic arts lens, that took the full scale print to a halftone.

You've got two of the three.

[Dave]

I bet the Wolly is a dialyte, not a tessar.

[Les]

It could very well be a dialyte type lens. The reason I went with the tessar is most dialytes/ Artars are f9 while APO Tessars are consistantly f10.

Les

[Dan Fromm]

[Dave]

http://www.cameraeccentric.com/html/info/wollensakcatd/design.html