Fun Time at our Spring Fair

Posted on May 30, 2017 by Robert

PHSC Spring Fair May 28, 2017

Toronto. Sunday was a great day! We had a terrific time at the spring fair on a warm and sunny day in Toronto. The attendance was steady and strong, the dealers enjoyed a brisk business, and we had a great time browsing the  tables and chatting with friends old and new.

From what I could see, everyone was enjoying the outing. I met folks from Michigan, from Montreal, and of course from Toronto and Mississauga. Congratulations to Mark, Clint, John and Sonja for a job so very well done!

Membership’s Wayne Gilbert in front of PHSC display booth

John Linsky and friend at his table

Nifty late 1800s Carl Zeiss Microscope at Sid Lipkowitz’s  table

Russ Forfar checking under his table

A table of cameras for old news hounds

The gang’s all here

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Family Cameras at the ROM

Posted on May 29, 2017 by Robert

Toronto. The ROM sent this news release out early this month,” [The ROM exhibition is called]  The Family Camera!  We hope you are looking forward to seeing the exhibition.

“It features over 200 objects, mostly photographs and stories collected through The Family Camera Network. It also includes loans from private and public collections, and new works by artists Jeff Thomas, Deanna Bowen, and Dinh Q. Lé.

“Visitors will also enjoy an immersive installation by OCAD U students entitled, The Living Room, which explores this domestic space as a place for sharing, and telling stories about, family photos. Continue reading →

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Money Found At Sunday PHSC Fair!

Posted on May 28, 2017 by Robert

Toronto. It was a sunny day of great finds for all but one person. Money was lost at our fair today and suddenly near closing it was FOUND!

Would the person who lost this money please contact me at info@phsc.ca noting the amount lost, what the money was contained in, and a description of the owner. I will convey the necessary data to the member holding the money. Thank You.

N.B. We had a very good turn out of both buyers and sellers. Great day, Great sales.

N.N.B. Just had a note back from our President: Owner and money were united at the end of the show – All’s well that end’s well, as Shakespeare said about four centuries ago…

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Zeiss Anastigmat Series V Lens

Posted on May 28, 2017 by Robert

An 1891 Zeiss Anastigmat Series V Lens (Later known as a Protar). Series V means an extreme wide angle (90 degree coverage) full plate lens (about 2 inches diameter).

Toronto. One of the very first lenses a young Paul Rudolph designed for Zeiss was its Anastigmat series. The series V is a super wide angle lens offering a 90 degree angle on a full plate (6.5 x 8.5 inches). This is about equal to a 22mm focal length 35mm camera lens.

My lens was made by Bausch and Lomb in Rochester. The most recent patent engraved on it is January 30th, 1891. The aperture covers f/20 to f/256. The name Anastigmat referred to the fact that the design was free of astigmatism along the film plane. The lens was also free of any curvature at the film plane. Continue reading →

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Focussing Aids in the 1800s

Posted on May 27, 2017 by Robert

Brass magnifiers to aid in focussing view cameras in wet & dry plate era.

Toronto. Those of us who predate digital cameras and smartphones may recall a nifty little 8x magnifier, the Agfa Lupe. It was used to look at 35mm negatives and slides on a light table. Instead, you could use the 5x magnification of the LVFOO vertical magnifier Leitz made for its screw mount series mirror boxes and focoslides.

Similar little gadgets came on the photography scene in the mid 1800s – long before 35mm film – or film of any sort.

Here I show two brass and glass magnifiers, one (right) by C.P.Goerz of Berlin and the other a no-name variety. They were used on the view cameras of the day to aid the photographer in creating a sharp image in the desired plane of the subject. The base of the magnifier was  placed on the ground glass over the desired plane and the camera focussing was slightly adjusted to bring the ground glass image into sharp focus to the eye looking down the little brass magnifier.

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Elmarit 28mm f/2.8 Wide Angle Lens

Posted on May 26, 2017 by Robert

Leica M 28mm Elmarit with Hood

Toronto. A Toronto Star ad by Len MacNeil sent me off to Scarborough in quest of Leica M lenses. When I arrived, Len had sold most of his lenses but he had a beautiful 28mm Elmarit left. This lens was designed in Wetzlar where a few were manufactured and labelled.

The lens manufacture moved to Midland, Ontario where my lens was made and clearly labelled (contrary to both Dennis Laney and Gianni Rogliatti). The lens was made in 1966 and uses a massive cell that fits deep into the camera body – too deep to mount on my Sony NEX cameras since it just touches the sensor mount. On my M4, the lens was free of the distortion that made the Angenieux 28mm on my Exakta so troublesome to use.

Two later lens designs were made eliminating this deep penetration into the Leica body. The 2nd design was made in Midland by Dr Walter Mandler who joined Leitz Canada when the little company was first founded after the second world war. Leitz Canada originally set up shop in the Midland Curling Rink, a spot Bell Canada used much later to assemble radio telephone equipment and gear that I helped install around the Georgian Bay area one summer.

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Hektor 2.8cm f/6.3 Leitz Screw Mount Lens

Posted on May 25, 2017 by Robert

Leitz Hektor 28mm lens 1937 for screw mount Leica

Toronto. On a sunny April day in 1982, I met Alex Thomas at a restaurant in North York. He had a few things to show me including this example of a 28mm Hektor wide angle lens for screw mount Leicas. At the time the lens was first offered (1935) it was in response to the Zeiss Tessar 2.8cm f/8 lens offered for the competing Contax 35mm camera.

The tiny lens was sold for two decades. My example (I did buy it) was made in 1937. It is still in pristine condition. The lens is almost the same focal length as the screw mount camera’s film to flange distance of 28.8 mm meaning it can focus to infinity on the leica body without resorting to the severely distorting retrofocus design used by companies like Angenieux. According to Dennis Laney, some 9,694 lenses were made in the two decades it was offered. The four best years in term of volume of manufacture were 1936, 7, 8 and 9. 1937 saw 1,720 of them made. The second war interceded and post war demand was decimated.

The lens consists of five elements – a single element surrounded by two cemented pairs. Post war lenses were coated before being sold. This was the very first 28mm lens ever made by Leitz for its Leica camera.

 

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Pierre Angenieux Paris R11 Lens

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Robert

Angenieux 28mm Retrofocus R11 on an Exakta Varex VX camera

Toronto. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I extended my Exakta Varex IIa camera with a 135m and a 28mm lens. I chose an Angenieux pre-set Retrofocus R11 lens for the 28mm as it focussed under 2 feet and was f/3.5 wide open. Unfortunately it used a retrofocus design. Unless you were perfectly level, the images it took had massive barrel distortion and vertical and horizontal lines went wildly off at odd angles.

I had no idea that a retrofocus design had such obvious geometric distortion before I owned such a design. To accommodate the Exakta mirror, even a normal lens had to be slightly retrofocus. It wasn’t until I owned a few Leica screw and bayonet mount 28mm lenses that I realized the short focal length lens could create a distortion free image after all IF the design could be made non-retrofocus… Continue reading →

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Miniature Camera Work

Posted on May 23, 2017 by Robert

Toronto. May 12, 1982 I picked up this book used from Edwards Books on Queen Street near Spadina. The bookstore was selling off a massive collection of photographic books. This book was a 1938 first edition by Morgan & Lester of  Leica Manual fame. The cover was a full colour engraving by Beck Engraving Co. of Philadelphia with branches in Springfield and NYC. It was created from a Kodachrome slide taken by Nickolas Murray. Kodachrome 35mm had recently been offered by Eastman Kodak in Rochester.

The attraction of this book was its focus on miniature cameras including the Leicas of the day, its extensive catalogue section, and its generous dollop of technical information for amateur darkrooms of the late 1930s. The choice of photographs told an unintentional story of the fashions and beliefs of the day. Continue reading →

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Steinheil Optical Institute

Posted on May 22, 2017 by Robert

Steinheil Quinar 135mm f/2.8 lens in Exakta mount

Toronto. In the late 1950s I bought my first Exakta. Months later I wanted to expand the camera with added lenses. Naively, I felt 35mm and 90mm were too similar to my standard lens of 55mm so I opted for 28mm and 135mm lenses.

I chose an f/2.8 135mm Steinheil Quinar for my long lens as I had a 55mm Auto-Quinon standard lens and quite liked its quality of construction. The Quinar pre-set lens was a beauty and in later years showed to have the best resolution of my three Exakta lenses. Much later, I realized that both the standard lens and 28mm wide angle were marvels of design. The wide angle was a retrofocus design created in the days before computers. Retrofocus means that the lens  has a physically longer distance from the lens centre (usually the diaphragm)  to the film plane than its actual focal length. This distance is needed to clear the mirror of the Exakta, especially at the infinity setting. Unfortunately in the mid last century such designs had significant geometric distortion (pin cushion and barrel). In contrast, the Leica 35mm and 28mm lenses were extremely low in their degree of geometric distortion. Continue reading →

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