Congratulations on a fine first image with THE lens. I hope there will be many more as I can certainly see the potential here. Wonderful, thanks. Wonder if I'll ever find one.

So talk to me, if I was looking at a Neon sign at night time in Las Vegas with this thing, are you saying it would be impossible to get a sharp outline of the actual neon filled glass contained inside the obvious glow?

I was very lucky to get this shot the first time, extremely lucky. All of my efforts came to 'nil' as most lighting illumination and/or intense highlights were/are just too much for lens. Some of the initial Polaroid test sheets were taken w/what I thought was very subdued light and STILL it was too much for the lens and for the Polaroid and were simply blown out.

Now all of this is at bet. F4.5-6, and of course I can always close down, but what would be the point of that? Closing down at some point gives the look of the VQ IV, so doing that, I may as well shoot with the VQ and save myself these headaches.

Look at the top of the glob, that was an effect I left in, I could see it on the groundglass, probably because of the thickness of the top of the globe caused a magnifying effect. Point is, this is from the a 60 watt modeling light from one of my 'itty bitty' made in China strobes I've had for 2000yrs.

Neon sign, forget it, or at least I'll forget it for right now, at my point in the learning curve w/this lens, maybe possible, but taking pictures of the light sources themselves has always been a 'dicey' proposition. This lens doesn't like a whole lot of light for what it does. A little goes a LONNNNNGGGG way w/this lens.

Maybe put another way, it's this, where I see where this lens talks is why I like this lens, I can see a sharp image inside of the soft one, look at the top-left corner of the globe, at the top, just to the left of the glow at the top, the left 'shoulder' of the lens. You'll have to look, but you can see the faintest outline of the sharper edge, inside the soft texture. It's there. Now this is w/light that is extremely 'low key' and getting dark to my naked eye but not quite.

The trouble w/using the lens w/more intense highlights is that they blow out and the sharply defined image overlaying the soft image DISAPPEARS, so you end up with the VERY SOFT part of the image, but not the sharp part. The intensity of the highlight covers that up, at least when you're wideopen or close to it. This image is at F6, most intese light source illuminating subject matter is 60 watt lightbulb!!!!

A challenging lens, definitely, and I was EXTREMELY lucky to get this, becuase from fumbling around all this time looking at what lighting schemes DIDN'T WORK, and from the Polaroids that DIDN'T WORK, a 'little devil' in the back of my mind was starting to whisper to me, 'you may not be up to this lens'.

In terms of your 'Neon' scenario, I always say 'where there's a will, there's a way. The issue is the lens was designed to put a sharp rendition of the image on top of a soft one, that it does like no other lens period, at least to me. Nothing in my stable of lenses puts a sharper image inside such a soft version of that same image, until the intensity of the highlights overpower everything and the sharp image disappears.

I should add that shooting this shot exposed very low key DOESN'T give you any appreciation of how soft this lens is at wideopen in bright light. In bright enough frontal light, it's a mess.

What I've got from all this so far is in bright light, the Ser. III is going to act like a lot of other soft focus lenses with a lot of glow/halo, minus any nuance. In subdued light, it's another lens, and it distances itself from the others.

That's my take
Jonathan

OMT, what's so interesting about the top left shoulder of the globe that I previously mentioned, is that there's a glow created by the oof area either just in front of, or behind the point of focus(I don't know which) in that area, and inside that faint glow, you can see a sharply curved black line which is the outline of the globe in sharp focus. This outline is faintly silhouetted against the brighter background highlight behind the globe, and since it's all glass you can see it.

It's faint, but if you look, you can see it. That is what I love about this lens, especially that part of the image, I'm going to remember that, I'll try to repeat this effect on a larger scale in another image later.

Jonathan and Jim,
When I got my 9" Verito from Jim I couldn't use it immediately because of a lack of lensboard so i played with it by holding itto project an image on a piece of card. The thing that surprised me was the formation of 3 distinct areas od sharp focus. In other word -- the actual image that was "focusused -- an image in front othe that plane and an image behind the focused image. I discovered this by moving the lens closer and further away from the dimpled light. I'm not certain what you call the light in the US but basically it is about 150 watts with a conical silvered body and a dimpled lens at the front. I concentrated on the actual pattern and discovered the three levels of focus by accident. Despite what most people claim about the Verito I find the best results with mine are acheived stopped down a little and that seems to bring the three levels of focus closer together. Wide open on 5x4 it is "very" soft. As I said mine is a 9" version and possibly quite old. I don't know if the design of the Verito changed at all over its life.

Steve

Hey Steve

My very simplistic understanding of SA took note of how these lenses used that to create a soft image over a sharp one, I'm surprised there can be three planes of focus, and if I'm understanding that correctly, then wow!! Jim has a Verito, I wonder if he gets the same effect?

Once you get close to a ballpark focus on the Ser. III, which say for example is between 2 and 7, you can rack the focus back and forth between 2 and 7, and it all looks the same. The changes between the points are VERY brief and VERY faint, 'it's here, and then it's gone'.

When focusing the image above where you see where my final focus was, I passed this focus point by without recognizing it several times, before finally going back and settling in on that point.

Only after going back and forth several times and really concentrating and going it very slowly do you began to catch a very brief 'wisp' that is say 5 which is the exact point at which there's a soft image over a sharp one.

What trips you up is the the other points 2,3,4,6, and 7, don't look worse than 5, they look the same, until you really concentrate and go slowly until you see that 5, very faintly has a slight/ever so slightly a wisp of a difference and is where the focus is nailed.

It's not the same as a regular lens where is goes from worse to better to best in a smooth steady progression until you get a 'snap focus', that ain't happening w/the Ser. III

I'm not trying to introduce needless 'drama', in fact, I hoping one of you guys lucks onto a Ser.III, and I'd like to be there when you first try to focus it.

It doens't help that I have 59yr old eyeballs either. If my eyesight deteriorates any more as I get older, then I'll probably be forced to put the lens up for sale. Hopefully that won't happen for while.

Ok -- I've worked out what the three images are -- I think.

The Verito I got came with another set of front and rear barrels [A Petzval set of similar length] When the Verito front barrel is used with the Petzval rear the phenomena I described occurs [for me] It is a Petzval with a soft/sharp centre and softer edges.

I just tried the Verito as a Verito and it is a single sharpish image with a lot of glow. I suppose that is why i prefer the Verito closed down a bit. Jim's description of mush is applicable on an enlarged 5x4. Stopped down it is quite nice. I'm not complaining.

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