Rare Lens

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Scarpia

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A little over 40 years ago when I was living in Europe I bought a used Leica M1 with an auxilary rangefinder and the quite rare Taylor, Taylor & Hobson, Cooke Amotal f2, 2 inch lens for about $110. The Leica needs a CLA, but the lens and rangefinder are just fine. Somehow, I have rarely used the lens. Recently I mounted it on a Bessa T I bought at photo village and found that the Italian mount and rangefinder cam worked just fine. I used an LTM adapter, of course. I am transmitting 3 photos taken within the last 2 weeks. The lens is remarkably sharp, note that the balusters of the dock rail in the middle background are very distinct in spit of the fact that I am using an old UMAX scanner which is what I have here in Warrensburg, NY.
Kurt M.
 
The first photo and this one were taken at f8. This was a craft fair in Warrensburg last weekend.
Kurt M.
 
This photo of my son and his wife on one of their rare visits was taken on July 4 on my deck at f5.6.
Notice the that the bokeh is very good except for the fact that the small streams of light coming through the trees at the top left and top right of the picture are little glowing circles, like floating, glowing cheerios (an oat breakfast cereal for those who live abroad). I remember reading about this phenomenon once, but don't remember what I read. Maybe someone can help.
Kurt M/
 
Hi Kurt -- It'll be fun and educational to give that rare Amotal lens a good workout! Different lenses give different appearances to out-of-focus items, often in a different way when they're closer than the plane of focus versus beyond the plane of focus. Here's a good discussion of bokeh (which is a Japanese term referring to the appearance of OOF areas): http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/bokeh.shtml

The distant OOF bright points in your pic are brighter around the rim of the imaged circle, which usually results in a harsher look to the bokeh. I know this is a very simplistic observation, but this looks like Zeiss Sonnars, Nikkors and other similar designs like the Jupiter-8. Quite different from Leica lenses.

It's very likely that your lens would give smoother bokeh for OOF items closer than the plane of focus, where the centers of the imaged circles are likely to be brighter than the rims. I believe it's a matter of over/undercorrected spherical abberation.

Something else noticeable, particularly in the second and third photos, is a "greyness" in the dark tones; a lack of black. This can be fixed in your photo editing software's Levels control.

In the below control window, I've moved the darkest tones (by sliding the left black triangle to the right) from the 0 Input Level to 67 on the histogram. See the before and after samples in the small displays, showing what it did to the pic. This effectively dropped the darkest greys to complete black, expanding the tonal range and increasing contrast. Nice looking young couple!
 
Just for fun, and I hope you don't mind, here's your first water-side picture fiddled in the Levels, then with a little increase in color brightness and saturation to add a bit of zing...

Really hard to assess sharpness in low-resolution online images, but this ol' Brit lens seems to have some life in it yet! :)
 
According to the optics books that I have, the "doughnut" or ring shaped objects behind the plane of focus are caused by over-correction of spherical aberration. The Japanese term is "bokeh" (as stated above), and over-correction of spherical aberration is often labelled as "Bad Bokeh", which starts all sorts of "heated debates" and UFO sightings. Most Fast-normal and wide-angle lenses seem to over-correct spherical aberration, and telephoto-lenses under-correct spherical aberration.

Francisco, my Leica M3 was wearing the Summaron with Eyes while telling me all of this. "Dr. Leica".
 
This is an example from the Nikkor 5cm F1.4 of doughnut shaped objects or "Bad-Bokeh". The lens is wide-open at F1.4.
 
And on an enlarged section of the image, you can clearly see what is going on.

Does optical humor go against "the Rules"?
 
Thanks guys, I really appreciate your comments. Doug, I lightened the photos somewhat as they appeared too dark from the scan. The software I have here at my summer place is pretty primitive as is my old PC. I will have to work on it when I return to NYC. Thanks also for the compliment about my son and daughter in law. Incidentally my wife is Japanese so I have heard all about the various meanings and derivations of bokeh which until 1997 had nothing whatever to do with photography.
Brian, thanks so much for your explanation and diagram. And may my future grandchildren be like your child.
Best regards and thanks again Kurt M.
 
Scarpia said:
Thanks guys, I really appreciate your comments. Doug, I lightened the photos somewhat as they appeared too dark from the scan. The software I have here at my summer place is pretty primitive as is my old PC. I will have to work on it when I return to NYC. Thanks also for the compliment about my son and daughter in law. Incidentally my wife is Japanese so I have heard all about the various meanings and derivations of bokeh which until 1997 had nothing whatever to do with photography.
Brian, thanks so much for your explanation and diagram. And may my future grandchildren be like your child.
Best regards and thanks again Kurt M.
Click to expand...

Now you have me curious. I want to know what bokeh meant before 1997 (or do I :D ). What was bokeh called before it was called bokeh? :rolleyes:
 
It is an old Japanese word with a number of related meanings. Basically it means indistinct, uncertain, blurry, etc. Therefore, the Japanese who like to circumlocute rather than speak bluntly have used it to mean a fool (one who does not think clearly); bokehtehkuru (one who is in the early stages of Alzheimers) and so on. If your boss shouts "bokeh" at you it means you have done something stupid. Japanese bosses can be blunt. Around 1997 a Japanese photographic writer referred to the out of focus characteristic of a lens as bokeh and it has become internationolized. I hope this helps. Thanks to my wife Takami.
Kurt M.
 
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