Nicht immer nur Kaviar ... (English Version)

[pgk]

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Finally sorted out lens boards for some of my Gandolfis. Larger lenses have to go on the 10" x 8" as they are both too big and too heavy for the smaller half-plate and 5" x 4" cameras. So first is a Grubb Petzval fitted via a home made lens board. This covers 4" x 3" despite its size! Two photos one on a 50mm f/1.4 aspheric Summilux-M and the other on a 50mm f/1.5 Summarit, both at f/11.

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Edited March 2, 2024 by pgk

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[pgk]

And with a Dallmeyer Patent (this became the Rapid Rectilinear) from ~1870 which covers around half-plate. Fitted onto a smaller board then onto a re-sawn adapter board which tooks me hours to make.

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Edited March 2, 2024 by pgk

[wlaidlaw]

1 hour ago, pgk said:

Finally sorted out lens boards for some of my Gandolfis. Larger lenses have to go on the 10" x 8" as they are both too big and too heavy for the smaller half-plate and 5" x 4" cameras. So first is a Grubb Petzval fitted via a home made lens board. This covers 4" x 3" despite its size! Two photos one on a 50mm f/1.4 aspheric Summilux-M and the other on a 50mm f/1.5 Summarit, both at f/11.

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Paul, 

Has your Summarit been cleaned? Your image with it looks rather like mine did before cleaning. Alan Starkie did mine but I am not sure he wants to do another one. He commented that reassembling the 16 blade diaphragm was a nightmare. Cleaning reduced the propensity to flare by a huge margin. Alan said the air surfaces either side of the diaphragm were particularly coated with dried on lubricant condensate. 

Wilson

[pgk]

3 hours ago, wlaidlaw said:

Has your Summarit been cleaned?

No Wilson. I bought it very cheaply and haven't got around to examining it closely as yet, but it does have issues. A myriad of minute scratches on the front element don't help, but in my experience they are rarely as significant as many would suggest. I'm sure that you are right and that a good service, plus an effective hood, would work wonders and eventually I might get around to sorthing this. But as you can see I really have a lot to do with other photo bits and pieces first!

Edited March 2, 2024 by pgk

[willeica]

57 minutes ago, pgk said:

No Wilson. I bought it very cheaply and haven't got around to examining it closely as yet, but it does have issues. A myriad of minute scratches on the front element don't help, but in my experience they are rarely as significant as many would suggest. I'm sure that you are right and that a good service, plus an effective hood, would work wonders and eventually I might get around to sorthing this. But as you can see I really have a lot to do with other photo bits and pieces first!

Paul, this is a known issue with f 1.5 Summarits. My two LTM Summarits are cloudy, but that issue can be fixed in an instant in Lightroom, by 'pulling the curve'. My M mount Summarit is perfect.

I love the A3 Grubb. I have the Grubb Petzval in A2 and A3 sizes. I am much more interested in Grubb's own Aplanatic designs which are capable of producing great images, even today. My Grubb A3 Petzval is shown below.

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I recently found this Aplanatic, carrying the name of Thomas Grubb's son Howard, in a collection which I am cataloguing here in Dublin. Its serial number dates it as being from the late 1870s, but the diaphragm indicates that it was finalised in the 1890s.

The lens is very similar to my aluminium Grubb which also has a diaphragm. This has orange coated lens elements, which may indicate scientific use. It has the highest serial number ever seen on a Grubb camera lens.

These Grubb lenses were made in the 19th Century about 3 miles away from where my house is today.

William 

[thomas_schertel]

Exa:

in front the original models with their sisters for M 42 mount, above the models with focal plane shutter

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yours sincerely

Thomas

[pgk]

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As stated in the "What did you buy today" I won this Grubb A3 in an auction (see Willeica's post above). It came with Waterhouse Stops and for those interested a photo and their 'Imperial' aperture sizes are included! Both photos were taken using another 1860s Grubb lens designed for stereo photography.

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[willeica]

1 hour ago, pgk said:

As stated in the "What did you buy today" I won this Grubb A3 in an auction (see Willeica's post above). It came with Waterhouse Stops and for those interested a photo and their 'Imperial' aperture sizes are included! Both photos were taken using another 1860s Grubb lens designed for stereo photography.

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Is that 1214 or 1274, Paul? If it is the latter, that would make it only 6 away from my 1268 shown above. I will send you an email later about the Waterhouse stops.

William 

[pgk]

Its 1214 which I'm dating to the early 1860s, perhaps 1862/3. there must have been an upsurge in demand around then becaue 1066 (A3) and 1089 (A2) are also Petzvals. The design was maintained and even in 1875 the Petzvals were still nearly identical even to the flange threads.

[Pyrogallol]

Not a Leica.

A Reid 111 with Canon Serenar lens. About to be loaded with Rollei 400 Infrared film.

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[romanus53]

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Leica IIIa, PLOOT, Dallon 5.6/17''

[willeica]

1 hour ago, romanus53 said:

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Leica IIIa, PLOOT, Dallon 5.6/17''

 

Nice one, romanus53. My latest item, related to this, is a Dallmeyer 12 inch f4.5 Large Adon on a Leica III from 1934 with a Dublin engraving- see third photo below. The optical design was done by CF Lan-Davis before he died at Gallipoli in 1915, but it continued to be used for many years afterwards. My one has two focus rings, one for the rangefinder and one to transfer the setting to the taking lens.

William 

Edited May 7, 2024 by willeica

[romanus53]

vor 9 Stunden schrieb willeica:

Nice one, romanus53. My latest item, related to this, is a Dallmeyer 12 inch f4.5 Large Adon on a Leica III from 1934 with a Dublin engraving- see third photo below. The optical design was done by CF Lan-Davis before he died at Gallipoli in 1915, but it continued to be used for many years afterwards. My one has two focus rings, one for the rangefinder and one to transfer the setting to the taking lens.

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William 

Interesting setup! Sadly the performance of my example ''(coated so appr. mid 1950ies) isn't overwhelming perhaps due to the age of the design #714 

 

[willeica]

10 hours ago, romanus53 said:

Interesting setup! Sadly the performance of my example ''(coated so appr. mid 1950ies) isn't overwhelming perhaps due to the age of the design #714 

 

The History of your one is below:

"1914 Series VI, Dallon Telephoto f5.6 3-30in Layout Da014.

This was the first tele Anastigmat, designed by L.B.Booth.B.Pat. 139,719, 151,507 of 1920. In general the f5.6

series of telephotos is the better for use today, with better corrections. They are easy to find but often well

used and rather worn. One factor is that the alloy was finished in black paint and this scuffs rather badly. [For

an example of a period design, see Conrady who designs a telephoto lens using glasses from the 1926

Chance list, and chooses G1= 1.5194, 63.0 (Chance 7742); G2= 1.6041, 37.8 (Chance 1034); G3= 1.5149,

57.9 (Chance 1066); G4= 1.6041, 37.8 again. So 3 types are used and he notes that the designs was not fully

optimized, but that a very good lens could be found.]

Dallon was made as:

9in to suit: 2.5x3.5in

11in 4.25x3.25in

12in 4.25x3.25in

14in P.Card

17in 6.5x4.75in

Dallon f3.5 This was listed in 1930, B.J.A. p576 advert. (and just may be a f4.5?) The aperture is repeated in

the Dallmeyer ad on p748, so it seems correct.

9in to suit: 2.5x3.5in 

12in 4.25x3.25in"

These just had tubes added to fit onto Leicas and use 35mm film.

Attached are some photos I took with my one. They are OK, given that we had severe storms that weekend and I had some issues with film wind on etc, but I did not acquire this rig to take photos with it 😇. For me, this is simply a rare and collectable item. If I just wanted to use a lens on a Leica with a rangefinder I would use a Leitz lens. However, Leitz did not have anything like this in that time period. 

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William 

 

[pgk]

40 minutes ago, willeica said:

One factor is that the alloy was finished in black paint and this scuffs rather badly.

Today we would initially use an etch primer for painting aluminium. I'd guess that they didn't back then by the sound of it.

[wlaidlaw]

1 hour ago, pgk said:

Today we would initially use an etch primer for painting aluminium. I'd guess that they didn't back then by the sound of it.

Early aerosol?

Wilson

[willeica]

13 hours ago, pgk said:

Today we would initially use an etch primer for painting aluminium. I'd guess that they didn't back then by the sound of it.

I don't recall saying this, but that, in fact, is the case with Dallmeyer lenses from that period, I have 4 of them. They are made from painted soft metal which is heavy, but also dents and scratches quite easily. The optical glass used is very good, though, if not quite up to the top German (Zeiss, Goerz etc) standards. I have used smaller Dallmeyer and Ross lenses on a Leica M10 and the results are below. The important thing, though, is that the British were fitting Leicas with interchangeable lenses before the folks in Wetzlar got around to doing this.

The first of these involved a Dallmeyer 3 inch Popular C-mount lens and second one a Ross 4 inch Teleros lens, both on LTM mounts. Both were taken at about f5.6. 

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I don't approve of pixel peeping, so I am only showing these to demonstrate that these lenses can take 'nice images'.

William 

Edited May 9, 2024 by willeica

[pgk]

10 minutes ago, willeica said:

I don't recall saying this, but that, in fact, is the case with Dallmeyer lenses from that period, I have 4 of them. They are made from painted soft metal which is heavy, but also dents and scratches quite easily.

You said: "They are easy to find but often well used and rather worn. One factor is that the alloy was finished in black paint and this scuffs rather badly." And this is what I have noted whenever I've seen early painted alloy Dallmeyer lenses. It just struck me that whilst we often use an etch primer today to ensure a good paint bond on aluminium (which can be tricky to get paint to adhere to), they may well have not done so in the past. Which would explain why they wear badly.

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[willeica]

21 minutes ago, pgk said:

You said: "They are easy to find but often well used and rather worn. One factor is that the alloy was finished in black paint and this scuffs rather badly." And this is what I have noted whenever I've seen early painted alloy Dallmeyer lenses. It just struck me that whilst we often use an etch primer today to ensure a good paint bond on aluminium (which can be tricky to get paint to adhere to), they may well have not done so in the past. Which would explain why they wear badly.

Thanks Paul. What you said is correct, it was just that I could not recall saying it. There is no evidence of primer on 3 of my Dallmeyer lenses, but the long barrel on the 12 inch lens may have had primer. What they did was to take a lens made for mounting on a board to a large or medium format camera and to add a barrel to that for use on 35 mm cameras such as the Leica. The original Dallmeyer Adon lens in the 1890s, from which the 12 inch lens was derived, was bare metal

 

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The example of the 12 inch Dallmeyer which is in the US and which Jim Lager wrote about in LHSA/LSI Viewfinder some years ago is also bare metal with no paint at all. I suspect that the owner may have removed whatever flakey paint may have been still on the lens element. The tube element looks pretty perfect though.

Before anyone gets too excited, this is the same lens, but the mount has been changed to give a single focus/rangefinder ring and there is also a viewfinder in the camera shoe to make changing lenses a lot easier.

William 

[wlaidlaw]

I wonder if the metal might be "German Silver". This is an alloy of copper, nickel and zinc but no actual silver. It was used for example to make the radiator surrounds on vintage Bentley cars from the Cricklewood factory era and 1920's Rolls Royce and other upmarket cars. It does polish to look like silver but does not get the ugly black tarnish as silver does if not polished regularly but it just goes dull looking. It is notoriously difficult to paint, as the paint only sticks to the oxide layer, which is mechanically very weak. 

Wilson