Hugo Meyer 5¼" (120mm) Wide Angle Aristostigmat coverage

[Ian Grant]

I tried asking on the LFP forum but had no luck.

I picked up a 5¼"/135mm f9 Meyer WA Aristosigmay yesterday very cheap £20 ($31) in a Dial set Compur with 2 aperture scales as it will split. Optically it's excellent and the shutter's accurate but has quite worn paintwork. It came from a clear out of items left over from a camera repair shop which had closed, the shutter has a new cable relaese socket and it may well have been repaired and never collected.

Meyer's 1927 advert claims it covers 6½"x8" at full aperture with a 4" rise, it seems to cover 10x8 OK with slight room for movements. The nbominal coverage is 100° but assuming $" Rise and corresponding Fall on whole plate that would correspond to over 14" in lansdascape format, enough to allow some lrise/fall and shift with 10x8.

Does anyone else have experience of these lenses ?

Ian

[Steve Smith]

but assuming $" Rise

I thought I was the only one who tried to type capital numbers!


Steve.

[Jerevan]

I guess Ian has a bout of "nbominal" typing incidents.

It sounds rather amazing that a lens of this vintage and focal length would cover 8x10, but I suppose I am underestimating the lens designers of the day. Shame on me.

[Dan Fromm]

Jerevan, coverage is a sometime thing. To some extent it depends on what's expected of a lens. Here's a case in point:

Henri Gaud has posted a page from a 1912 Établissements Phillipe Tiranty catalogue -- http://trichromie.free.fr/trichromie.../27/PERIGRAPHE -- listing f/14 and f/6.8 Lacour-Berthiot Périgraphes. It says that both are convertible, claims that the f/14s cover 115º and the f/6.8s cover 95º. f/14s were offered in focal lengths of 45, 60, 75, 90, 120, 135, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, and 500 mm. Recommended formats at f/25 are consistently between 100º and 110º without movements.

The 1912 coverage estimates may be inflated. An undated SOM Berthiot catalog published between the wars (see http://www.collection-appareils.fr/a...9d3802b532215d ) says that f/14 Périgraphes cover 106°, illuminate 112°. I have a SOM Berthiot brochure from, probably, the late 1940s that claims 100° for the 90/14 Périgraphe VIa and doesn’t mention convertibility; in it SOM Berthiot’s convertible Dagor type is the Eurygraphe. Georges Laloire has sent me undated data from Berthiot, probably published between the wars, that also claims 100° for f/14 Périgraphes. As I said, coverage is a sometime thing.

Modern wide-angle lenses for large format have two very important advantages over the ancient anastigmats such as the W/A Aristostigmat and Cooke Ser. VIIb (4/4 double Gauss), Protar V (5/2) and Perigraphe VIb (6/2 Dagor clone). They're faster and have less fall-off of illumination off-axis.

[Ian Grant]

I discovered that my optical mouse sometimes jumps and I insert letters in the wrong place, alongside the small keyboards on laptops that cause occasional double letters like nbominal

Hugo Meyer made some remarkable lenses in the 1920s & 30s, in another thread there was discussion of specially modified Speed Graphics to shoot boxing matches in the 30's but Meyer had a 6x4.5 reflex with an f1.5 plasmat lens by the mid 1920s, Ernemann had an f1.3. Hugo Meyer were selling the WA Aristostigmat as a professional lens.

There were other small WA lenses with big coverage I have a 141mm f16 Ross WA AM lens, Air Ministry - an unmarked Protar identical to the Ross Protars made before WWI which were f16 (and marked with the Zeiss Patent number) unlike the Zeiss version which was f18.

I saw a Tessar the other day in a Compur marked Ross, Mill Hill. Mill Hill was the pre WWI Zeiss Binocular and lens factory the company set up around 1913 which was transfered to Ross by the British Government during WWI. There are some odd lenses around.

Ian

[JLP]

A few months ago i sold a 200mm F9 Aristostigmat in a Deckel Compur shutter. It was a very nice lens, reasonably sharp, a little low in contrast (Uncoated) and had lot's of movement on 8x10
I have the same focal lenght in a coated Cooke series VIIa and find that to be sligthly sharper and with a little bit better contrast.

[MDR]

I have the 150mm version on my 5x7 as jlp said it's reasonable sharp and offers plenty of movement. The coverage is probably the same as the Berthiot perigraphe. Unfortunately the name Hugo Meyer is held in low esteem because of it's GDR future but the pre war lenses are second to none in my opinion. And even some of the GDR lenses aren't bad. The Plasmat was a Paul Rudolph for Hugo Meyer design after all.

Dominik

[cyberjunkie]

If i had to place a bet on which W.W. Aristostigmat had better coverage, i would choose the f/9 version instead of the latter f/6.3 one.
I could be wrong though, as i don't remember if the f/9 has the same optical layout.
Arne Croell reports about Meyer LF lenses in his document about post-WWII easter block optics, but the f/9 version was abandoned by then.
There are a few missing informations in that very interesting document:
1) the 80mm W.W. Aristostigmat is missing from the list
2) some barrel lenses have cells that can be fitted in shutters of the same vintage: i own an uncoated WW Aristostigmat 16cm f/6.3, which goes in a Compur No.2 shutter (from a 240mm convertible Symmar), keeping a perfect spacing.

The f/9 version had some more focals, so they could fill a few gaps in the f/6.3 line. I was not aware that many of them were sold in shutter, i thought that the vast majority of them were sold in barrel.
A. Croell estimates the coverage of the f/6.3 version as 90 degrees at f/22.
My 16cm covers 8x10" with some movements. So the f/9 could cover 95 degrees, which should be enough to cover the format , with no room to spare.

Did you check the reflections on your 135mm?
Is it a double gauss?

have fun

CJ

[yronnen]

I have a 1:9 7 1/8 inch (180mm) Wide Angle Aristostigmat mounted in a Compur shooter. The shutter does not look to have been added later so it look to me as though at least some f9 lenses were sold in shutters. I can not speak for the lenses performance as I have not used it yet as the shutter needs a C.L.A.

[Ian Grant]

Welcome to APUG.

My BJP Almanacs show these lenses in availble shutters as far back as the mid 1920's.

Ian