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
