105mm f/3.7 Ektar - Heliar
Joe Lacy
Richard Knoppow
>Anyone know anything about this lens?
>
>
Its a Heliar type in construction although its designer, Fred
Altman, claims in the patent to have used a different approach than
Hans Harting did for the Heliar.
Kodak made a number of lenses of this type. The Enlarging Ektar
series, the f/3.5, 100mm lens in the Medalist camera, a 35mm wide
angle lens for the Ektra camera (an attempt at a deluxe 35mm camera
from the early 1940's) and a microfilm lens for the Microfile system.
Altman's patent is USP 2,279,384.
There is another Kodak lens sometimes comfused with this. Its a
107mm f/3.7 lens. This is a Tessar but with the order of power of the
cemented rear component reversed. This arrangement has some virtue
where very high index glass is used and appears in some other Kodak
lenses. However, the 107mm lens appears to have been replaced by
Altman's Heliar type after only a short time. It appears only in the
first edition of the Kodak lens book.
The Kodak lenses are of very high quality, the extra element being
used to get better color correction than can be gotten by a Tessar of
the same speed.
Heliar types are not particularly wide coverage, no more than an
equivalent Tessar. The design was not exploited much by designers
outside of Voigtlander, where it originated. The best known of these
lenses is probably the Pentac designed by Lionel Booth of Dallmeyer.
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA.
dick...@ix.netcom.com
Joe Lacy
dry, I will print and post my opinion , for whatever that is worth. The
price was certainly right, but the thing was Hell-iar to find. :-)
Joe
"Richard Knoppow" <dick...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
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william mitchell
If, however, you look at the prints they will appear extraordinary. I don't
understand this apparent contridiction.
"Joe Lacy" <jml...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:Uh2%7.15855$DG5.1...@rwcrnsc53.ops.asp.att.net...
Joe Lacy
Just for fun today I swapped out my enlarging lens (Rodenstock Rodagon) with
this 105 Ektar. I also have a 100 Componon - S. I can't usually tell the
difference in the Rodagon and the Componon prints but I can say this...that
Heliar may be sharper then both! That little dude is a BLAZINGLY sharp.
Chris Perez sent me an e-mail about this lens and said it resolves at about
100 lpmm at f11 in good cases. That's sharper than Mamiya 7 glass! I didn't
do any "real" tests but you can count the twigs on the twigs on the twigs on
this print. Someday ... I'll get a camera and shoot it . :-)
There's one on ebay for sale BTW, not mine.
Joe
"Joe Lacy" <jml...@attbi.com> wrote in message
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william mitchell
against the Ektar.
Richard Knoppow
>Thanks for the Info. I also have a Symmar-S/MC. Will try to check it out
>against the Ektar.
>
>
It will be interesting to hear what the differences are. The Ektar
is a very good lens but it doesn't have the coverage of the Symmar by
quite a bit.
Kodak had the advantage of making its own glass and was the pioneer
in commercial development of the rare earth glasses developed at the
U.S. National Bureau of Standards. While its been suggested that
Zeiss- Schott developed such glasses during the early to mid thirties
there is no question about the work done at the NBS at about the same
time. These glasses were first used commercially around 1939 or 1940
at Kodak. Lanthanum and similar glass must be melted and refined in
pure Platinum lined pots so the procedure is not cheap.
The high index with low dispersion of these glass types considerably
expanded the choices lens designers had, making possible lower
aberrations and better color correction.
However, from the patent data available its uncertain if Kodak used
these glasses in the early Ektar series. I will have to look at
Altman's patent again to see if it specifies Lanthanum glass.
They certainly did very careful design and had excellent
manufacturing QC, at least during the time Rudolf Kingslake ran the
optical department (roughly 1938 to 1961).
I wonder what sort of lenses Kodak would have made using the Plasmat
type, which is the basis of most modern LF and enlarging lenses. They
made some supberb Planar types for the Ektra camera and later for a
Leica clone made for the military.
The early Hasselblad lenses are Kodak Ektars of similar design to
Altman's Heliar type above.