Pre-War uncoated Tessar 50/2.8 Test

[wlewisiii]

I recently made a deal with Eli Griggs for a nice new to me pre-war Tessar for my Contax II. I popped in some Reala & got the first two rolls back today. Most of it is my usual dreck, but I thought I had a couple worth sharing.

First is a country road south of town. The tree & corn simply caught my eye & this was the one of a number I felt was the best composed. f16/125th

The next is a fence near there. I liked the old nearly rotted away wooden fence post. f16/125th

William

 

[wlewisiii]

The next one is a quick shot of my son. Compact florencent lighting makes it f2.8/25th. I can see why people might think that pushing the design to 2.8 before the war was pushing thier luck :bang::angel:


Last for this batch is a little landscape with oak & daisy. f11/125th.

William

 

[raid]

William,
I sent my Tessar to Eddy Smolov for a possible cleaning job after I got my first results back. Eddy told me yesterday that "there is nothing wrong with the Tessar." It's just an old lens that was pushed beyond its limits at 2.8.

 

[wlewisiii]

I have to agree. I can see this one is just clear as a bell & the results speak for themselves, even in web versions. For me, that's ok, I'll continue to explore the limits of the lens - I'd not be surprised if it sharpens up considerably even at f4. If nothing else, I'm certainly happy with the oaks & that's half the battle right there.

William

 

[Santafecino]

Nice that the shadows aren't dead black in the picture of the oaks but have a little tone. And the sky is a little hazy somehow. These uncoated lenses capture the mood of a summer's day.
--Lindsay

 

[payasam]

There's no question that the Tessar has a high place in the history of photography.

 

[wlewisiii]

Nice that the shadows aren't dead black in the picture of the oaks but have a little tone. And the sky is a little hazy somehow. These uncoated lenses capture the mood of a summer's day.
--Lindsay

Thanks. I got a nice 8x12 made from it at the local lab the other day. The haze is probably just the cloud line changing the light from the front to the rear of the image.

William

 

[mfogiel]

I'd suggest a few things:
- try it with a medium speed B&W film
- try to shoot a scene with some front and rear points of interest to see the 3D rendering
- try to shoot it at f5.6-8, as beyond this, the diffraction kicks in, and before that the lens is too soft
- try to shoot it with the sun "behind you", as they used to say some time ago...

 

[wlewisiii]

I'd suggest a few things:
(snip)

All good suggestions, though I'll probably not be too formal about it. I've got some Plus-X loaded and I'll just carry it and shoot whatever pops up. If nothing else, I'll have a wee bit of fun like I did the other day and that's all I ask of my toys.

William

 

[Highway 61]

I'd suggest a few things :

- use a good B&W or color film
- don't have it processed at a minilab or any other around-the-corner drugstore but at an actual lab (not speaking of some expensive pro labs of course)
- if you don't process your own B&W film, use some Kodak BW 400CN or Ilford XP2 film (excellent black and white files for web sharing)
- don't get confused with "Save for Web" and "Jpeg compression level" (your shots are so heavily compressed that all that I can see are big pixels packs) : basically, to get a nice yet "light" image for the web (<300KB), you have to
1/downsize it in several steps
2/"Save for Web" as an optimized Jpeg copy.

I have got so surprisingly nice results with an uncoated prewar collapsible Sonnar 50/2 on my Contax II that I don't think that the photos above are the actual mirrored-image of what a CZJ Tessar can render, even if the prewar 50/2.8 formula wasn't the best idea for sure.

 

[Petroleum V. Nasby]

What's the story with the glass of beer next to the Graflex?

Is that some sort of schtick promoting "drunk photography"?

 

[wlewisiii]

Eh? No, I was just in the mood to make a new avatar shot and used the pint of Guiness as a scale reference to show the relative small size of the 2x3 Pacemaker Speed Graphic (not Graflex).

I've been pondering doing a different one with my Contax II but I haven't had any decent lager in the house in awhile.

William

 

[wlewisiii]

I'd suggest a few things :

I have got so surprisingly nice results with an uncoated prewar collapsible Sonnar 50/2 on my Contax II that I don't think that the photos above are the actual mirrored-image of what a CZJ Tessar can render, even if the prewar 50/2.8 formula wasn't the best idea for sure.

I tend to only use a small selection of films - Plus-X, BW-400CN, Foma/Arista.EDU Ultra, Fuji Reala & Superia is really about it. And I certainly agree that you're right about these being over compressed. All I can say there is I only recently got a copy of PS Elements and really don't know it's quirks yet. The original scan is much better looking and, as I said before, I'm very pleased with the 8x12 I had printed of the country road shot.

This isn't the first Tessar I've owned or even the first uncoated lens. I have some idea of what to legitimatly expect from it and under what conditions it will perform up to those expectations. To be certain, this lens will never match, performance wise, the 1912 5x7 f6.3 B&L licensed Tessar that I use on an Anniversary Speed Graphic; OTOH it will do quite well within it's own limitations.

William

 

[Highway 61]

If you can upload the large/uncompressed size file of the country road photo (photo #1, because I don't find the others interesting, to say it frankly and w/o malice) somewhere on a web server and tell me the image url I will make a 800x600 web-sized copy from it with CS2 and then you'll see what you can do w/ your Tessar.

Provided that you didn't shoot it at f/2.8 and without any lens hood, heavily missing the exposure speed setting.

But for sure you didn't - what would be the point of doing this ?

PS Elements would do it (speaking of the editing job) as well.

Lenses haven't "limitations". This is a new concept I hadn't heard of before.

Photographers do.

Nah, okay, got it - bokeh and lens limitations for artists.

 

[furcafe]

I've actually gotten decent results from the prewar Tessars @ in the f/3.5-4 range & even @ f/2.8 when using contrasty high-speed films like Fuji Press 800 & Neopan 1600. You can think of the f/2.8 Tessar as Zeiss's way of reducing vignetting of the older f/3.5 version when used wide-open!

 

[Highway 61]

Here is the country road photo as per my own "images presentation for the web" criteria.

William sent me the large size Jpeg a few hours ago.

I must say that the original large size scan isn't terrific at all (what else could we expect from minilabs scans...) and that the final result from a scan made with a Minolta Dimage or Nikon Coolscan film scanner would be far better.

Yet, if you compare it with the first sample of the same image...

Absolutely nothing wrong with that prewar Tessar IMO.

 

[raid]

I just got back my Tessar 5cm/2.8 from Eddy Smolov.I thought that my photos looked "different" with this lens, so I suspected internal dust or something that needed cleaning. Eddy called me to tell me "Raid ... Tessar is fine". There was no need for cleaning. This is the way a Tessar is.

 

[Ron (Netherlands)]

Here is the country road photo as per my own "images presentation for the web" criteria.

William sent me the large size Jpeg a few hours ago.

I must say that the original large size scan isn't terrific at all (what else could we expect from minilabs scans...) and that the final result from a scan made with a Minolta Dimage or Nikon Coolscan film scanner would be far better.

Yet, if you compare it with the first sample of the same image...

Absolutely nothing wrong with that prewar Tessar IMO.

Excellent Job Highway 61! This is how it should be done, before one could even tell if there might be something wrong with the lens or not.

 

[raid]

As a B&W image:

It was done not as highway61 elaborateley has done! Good information here!

 

[wlewisiii]

Here is the country road photo as per my own "images presentation for the web" criteria.

Hi, thank you for your work on it. So that I can learn a bit more (and maybe someone else too ), would you tell me the steps you followed to make these improvements? I used to be reasonably good at it but my nearly 2 years on the road seem to have leached away my PS skills.

Thanks again!

William