Thambar

[Roger Hicks]

My 1936 f1.5/50 Leitz Xenon is a "poor mans" Thambar......mine has "minty" glass and about 15% haze and cost me only $200!!!

Thambar`s, though they are amazing pieces of glass, they are more a collectors item then something to use everyday, it costs just too much to get the entire kit together with the rare "spot" filter, caps and hood.

Xenon`s and Summarit`s with a % of haze can give a very similar effect, especially in black n white films. 🙂

Tom

Dear Tom,

Possibly you're right (though I'm not convinced) -- but it was the Thambar on the M8 that amazed me.

Trying to collect the components separately sounds like hard work, but having bought the complete outfit, the spot filter is a waste of time in my book.

It's a lot cheaper than a Noctilux, though!

Cheers,

R.

 

[LeicaTom]

Dear Tom,

Possibly you're right (though I'm not convinced) -- but it was the Thambar on the M8 that amazed me.

Trying to collect the components separately sounds like hard work, but having bought the complete outfit, the spot filter is a waste of time in my book.

It's a lot cheaper than a Noctilux, though!

Cheers,

R.

Yes, I`d like to see my Xenon work on a M8 too, someday....I have to say when I buy rarer lenses, I try to buy everything together with them, I don`t like the factory hood for the Xenon it`s a "barndoor" just like the Summitar design, but I have an early 1950`s Japanese WALTZ Summarit hood on my Xenon now and it works fine.

.....yeah the Thambar is cheaper then the Noctilux, but harder to find with "minty" glass......I think the Xenon is the most exotic lens I`ll be using on my IIIC`s 😉

Tom

 

[shadowfox]

You can joke, but I never saw the interest of buying a "soft focus" lens.

A little like buying a blunt pencil.😕

Richard, from my art classes back way when, there are some masterpieces that won't come to fruition without using blunt pencils 🙂

Soft lenses have their uses.

 

[David Goldfarb]

The point of a soft focus lens is that it does things that can't be done otherwise. The most interesting soft focus lenses, to my taste, produce a kind of layered effect, with a sharp subject that has a diffuse glow. It is very different from diffusion, as might be created by putting a mesh screen over the lens, or a black dot filter, which diffuses the whole image uniformly or a center spot, which puts the sharp area in the center instead of wherever you want it.

Diffusion under the enlarging lens sprays the shadows into the highlights--the opposite of what diffusion on the taking lens does. Done subtly it's not a bad effect. Done heavily, it can produce a ghoulish effect, which is sometimes interesting as well. The most natural version of this that I've seen was with a Softar I on the enlarging lens for about 1/3 of the enlargement time. Neither effect, though, looks like what an interesting soft focus lens looks like, and different soft focus lenses look different from each other.

I have yet to see any kind of convincing soft effect produced digitally that looks like the effect of a Verito or the Cooke PS945 or Pinkham and Smith Visual Quality IV or Universal Heliar or the Thambar. That isn't to say that one can't get interesting diffuse focus or soft focus effects digitally, but they won't look like the effects you can get with a classic soft focus lens.