Question about Wollensak Velostigmat "Focus" Series II

[fanuja]

I have a similar question on the above lens which is set in a ilex shutter. I really don't know what it's for because I am strictly a 35 RF person. It seems as though I can find plenty of info on series II lenses, but hardly anything on the I series. From what I can find it appears to be used on a medium format camera.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Joe

[Jon Shiu]

You can find the Wollensak catalogs on cameraeccentric.com

Jon

[Whiteymorange]

OK, Here's one that is not in the catalogues, as far as I can tell. It's engraved "Bell Velostigmat Wide Angle" and it's in an Wollensak "Autex" Shutter. the focal length appears to be about 8", so my guess is that it's for 5x7, though as a wide angle, it could cover far more than that. It's a bit dirty and I haven't taken any pictures with it or of it, so this post is a shot in the dark, so to speak. I can't find any reference to it on the web and only find "Bell" and Wollensak connected on any listing for the high speed work the Bell Labs contracted to Wollensak in the middle of the 20th century. This gear appears to be much earlier, maybe 20's or 30's.

Ring any "bells?"

[luvcameras]

Could be the lens off of the Bell Panoramic Camera

Dan

http://www.antiquewoodcameras.com/bells.html

[Whiteymorange]

Hi Dan,
Great link, but it doesn't look like that. I'll post a pic of it when I get back to my school studio where it sits in a box of other goodies I'm checking out for my friend Dick.

And thanks for all the great stuff you put on your website! I use it for research all the time.

Whitey

[Whiteymorange]

Actually, Dan, I think you got it. Here, from http://www.photographyhistory.com/CS...lpanorama.html , is what I think is the lens and shutter combination I have:

Most importantly, the camera now came with several choices of more advanced Wollensak multispeed shutters, such as the Regno and Victo, and the accompanying Wollensak lenses were incrementally sharper than what preceded them. The basic Wollensak wide-angle symmetrical, with a maximum allowable diaphragm setting of f12, still suffered from slightly uneven exposure in the image corners if the aperture was too large, but a later more expensive option for the more demanding photographer was the outstanding Wollensak Velostigmat Wide Angle Series III. It boasted truly balanced exposure across the entire panoramic frame at its maximum aperture of f9.5, and that in turn translated to much faster and practical exposure times.

Emphasis mine.

[jimgalli]

There were NO 8 1/4" Soft Focus Series II Velostigmat's, so that solves that dilemma. The Velo was in production for a long long long time. It is like a Volkswagen bug in the sense that if you park a 1955 model next to a 1974 model, you'll find lots of little differences. Black barrels, chrome barrels etc. etc. etc.

Now, if you want a poor man's soft focus, the Velo is a great little lens to play with. Here's a shot where I used an 8 1/4" Velo and actually took the rear glass out of the barrel and flipped it around backwards.

Here's a page where I did a different mod, also to an 8 1/4" Velo. I physically spaced the front element .032 inch forward to accomplish what the bigger brothers do with their diffusion thread.