Re: dreamy Nikon lenses

[Richard Knoppow <dickburk@ix.netcom.com>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Judy Seigel" <jseigel@panix.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 4:06 PM
Subject: Re: dreamy Nikon lenses


> I've enjoyed this thread, while reflecting that these 
> things (duh!) do go in cycles...  I remember reading 
> Gernsheim's furious contempt for Julia Margaret Cameron's 
> "dreamy" tableaux, tho he did like her portraits of famous 
> men.
>
> Somehow the matter came up in a class I was teaching in 
> the '90s, I mentioned that Julia Margaret had a lens 
> *specially made* to be "bad," and the class leapt up, 
> almost as one, wanting to know where to get one...
>
> Nobody mentioned smearing vaseline on the lens, tho I've 
> heard about that, and a friend of mine sticks a magnifying 
> glass in front of some camera or other and gets a great 
> "bad" image with that (wracking my brains trying to 
> remember who that was !!!).
>
> But Rudolpho's e-mail makes me wonder what I was wondering 
> already.  I happen to have a Goertz Dagor, and even (think 
> I) know where it is.  Can I fasten that in front of a 
> digital camera... ?  I suppose the answer is "try it," 
> but... any hints?
>
> Judy
    The Vaseline trick was made famous by Bob Guchione 
(sp?) of Penthouse magazine although I suspect it is a very 
old trick. I am not sure I want to do this to any of my 
lenses.
    Tessars will produce just awful images when the front 
cell is removed. The back cell contains most of the power 
and most of the correction is in the front. I don't think 
you would want this effect except for some special effect.
    I don't know how to adapt the Dagor to a digital camera 
because I suspect its focal length may be much too long 
although Goerz made some short FL versions of the lens. The 
soft focus effect is small and exists when the lens is wide 
open, nonetheless it gives a pleasant softness for some 
types of work. The effect is best when the complete lens is 
used. A single Dagor cell is useable with about 1.8X the 
focal length of the combined lens but the most obvious 
aberration is coma which is not very pleasant. Coma 
subtracts when two identical lenses are used back to back, 
as they are in the combined Dagor, but spherical adds so 
that the complete lens actually has more zonal spherical 
than a single cell.
   You might be able to expeiment with an adaptor as simple 
as a cardboard tube and some tape.

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@ix.netcom.com