A shot turning out like this, is why I love photography; there wasn't much I did to it, and there's no complicated story behind it, I was simply fortunate.   I had the Kollmorgen lens on my Speed Graphic, and had just finished shooting something else, looked over and spotted this reflector, and put it in front of the camera to see what I had.  As soon as I looked through the reflex I knew I was going to shoot it.

  What you see through the reflex w/this lens, is exactly what you get.
 

   Just goes to show you the treasures you can unearth w/a $21.00 lens.

      Getting this site going has been a fun part of my life.  The site's still new, and and it excites me when folks take the time to visit.   One aspect of this which caused the creation of this site, and which has caused a fundamental change in my feelings over the years towards what tools I choose to use in my photography, specifically textures,  wideopen exposures, the exploration of projection lenses, gun camera lenses, magic lantern optics and the like as taking lenses.......... all the wonderful and offbeat techniques and things that can be had for so little money, and which now make me laugh at my long ago Rollei days when I'd pay a fortune for a lens becuase it was sharp and because of it's specs. 

      A trio of Kollmorgen projection lenses came up for sale on ebay, for $64.00 US, included shipping.  3 Art Deco masterpieces for approx. $21.00 a piece is a gamble I'll take anyday and so I bit.  Two of the lenses turned out not to be suited for my purposes, but are gonna make nice Art Deco style subject matter.  The third lens is a 5inch and very fast F2 optic which was worth the transaction, and what I've gotten from it has been right between the AeroEktar and Jim Galli's fabulous Secret Weapon lens, or at least that's my wishful thinking.

      When I shoot w/this kind of lens, I keep wanting to describe what I see as "Sharp to so out of focus it's surreal', or 'sharp to surreal', where the subject matter shares it's uniqueness w/the transition between it and the background.   It's all about the degree w/which these lenses do this. 

    Jim Galli's SW lens, combined with Jim's skill, gives us a benchmark for how the effects of these lenses can be explored.  I'm just happy I can ride along the same trail and pick up a few nuggets of my own. 

    This is a shot of lightbulb, nothing deep, nothing cerebral, which is geat by me............

Jonathan, I know I should have been working on your lens today when I was making this photo.  What do you think of the look of this one.  It is a tweaked 14" triplet which retains it's 14" focal length and easily covers 8X10.  I continue to tinker with this stuff because the day will come when all of the old fabulous famous lenses will be in collections and folks will want to make soft photos even though there are no more lenses.  This is no Pinkham & Smith surely.  But it is none the less interesting.  What do others think?

     There are several vignettes behind this shot of my son JB and his beloved skateboard at the park.   I was shopping around for an Alphax#3 shutter so I could shoot strobes w/a 10 1/2 inch Turner Reich#4 that Jim Galli is tweaking for me, and bid on an Alphax#3-190mm Wolly Raptor which came up for auction on ebay.   I was really only after the shutter, but got both the Alphax and Raptor lens for $97.00.   Why it went for that low a price might've been because the pic of the lens didn't look all that hot.   Anyway, both the lens and shutter were in great shape when I got in hand.

     Getting the lens-shutter Friday, meant a shakedown test Saturday to see what I had w/both this lens and shutter, and I did it with Fujifilm's instant 4x5 packfilm, FP-100C45.   Fujifilm FP-100C45 in terms of sharpness, is leaps and bounds ahead of Polaroid's color films,  and I've purchased plenty of this film to experiment with, although from my initial experience with this film, it can certainly can be used as the final medium for a project, it's that good a film.

     I loved Steve Nichols b&w shots with his 162mm Raptor that he's unloaded here on WideOpen, and from playing around with mine, I can see why this is such a great lens, particularly at wideopen, with it's 'sweet', 'full bodied' roundness.  Nothing harsh about this lens, it's easy on the eye.

     I shot JB wide open at F4.5, using a neutral density filter to knock down the intense outside illumination 3 stops to keep from having to stop down.

 
     I still can believe that I paid approx. $50.00 each for both this shutter and lens, and I've become more and more entrenched now in looking at life through the classic lens.

    There's been quite a discussion on the forums regarding Jim Galli's comparisons of classic lenses such as the Pinkham & Smith.   I have 2 of these lenses now, the P&S Visual Quality in a 12" focal length, and a P&S Semi-Achromatic Doublet SeriesIII, NoIII(NoIII means a 16").  I had a Cooke PS945 which I had gotten after pursuing the elusive Pinkham & Smith lenses for approx. 4-5 years and giving up all hope of ever getting one of these lenses, and then as luck would have it, as soon as I purchased the Cooke, I found out about the Visual Quality, and then the S.A. Doublet.  Having acquired the Visual Quality, which the Cooke was based on, and considering the fact that the VQ was a 12" focal length as opposed to the Cooke's 9", and considering the fact that in addition to being able to use the VQ on both 4x5 and 810, the Cooke then became expendable.

   I had Adam Dau of SK Grimes convert my VQ from a barrel lens to 'in shutter', so I could I use the lens for strobe-portrait photography by matching the 'in shutter' conversion to an Ilex #5 shutter.   The Art-Deco look of the conversion looks so right to me, I couldn't imagine my 'in shutter' version not being close to an interation of what the VQ would look like if the lens were being produced today.

   The P&S Semi Achromatic Doublet, SeriesIII, NoIII, is the most amazing lens I've ever laid eyes on.............even when I first saw the lens after I purchased it when it was in the most terrible of shape.  It had approx. a solid 1/8" thich coating of dried mud/grease/grime/dirt/corrosion/whatever, and was totally encrusted to where you couldn't see the glass very clearly except to make out that there was a prominent separation in the rear group that needed to be repaired.

   Physically, the lens is humongous, and reminds me of a small beer keg, and I'll point out in reference to the image I've uploaded, that the lensboard the SA Doublet is mounted on is a 158mmx158mm Toyo lensboard.  The lens comes w/an equally humongous #6 Studio shutter, which I didn't even know existed until I got this lens.  The shutter is bigger than it looks in my pic, and is wider that the 158mm lensboard!!!!

   There were several points in the restoring of this lens where the very attempt to restore the lens, could've destroyed the lens.  Corrosion was eating holes into whatever metal alloy Pinkham had used to make this lens, and the barrel needed to be dunked in a chemical bath according to Adam of SK Grimes to get rid of/stop the corrosion process, before Adam could repair the holes.  Adam was very concerned about the type of alloy used in this barrel which was not a modern alloy, and how it would react to the chemical bath.  

    John Van Skelton was going to clean off the encrusted grease/grime/dirt off the front and back groups, and then heat and separate the rear group to repair the basalm sep and reglue the rear group w/moder UV cement.  There was the very real possibility which John made clear to me, of destroying the glass while it was being heated to get the elements apart. 

     The #6 shutter was inoperable, and the piston used ot actuate the shutter was froze solid, from the lens being left to rot outside in horrible conditions, and the repair of this shutter seemed hopeless.

      This story had a happy ending, because of the miracles worked by these consumate technicians,  John Van Skelton cleaned off the glass, got the rear group apart w/out cracking either element, and the glass looks beautiful.  Adam was able to repair strip off all the corrosion, repair all holes, machine a custom flange, and paint the barrel.   Caro Flutot worked the supreme miracle, she unfroze this shutter, got the piston to working, and this humongous shutter works like a charm, every time.

      The restoration of this lens took quite a while, and while it was being restored, I read everything I could get my hands on, regarding all of the lenses in the P&S line.   I even contacted the musuem curator in charge of the Alvin Langdon Coburn P&S collection regarding his lenses.   I'll state here that the curator mentioned that the one lens they don't have is the SA Doublet SerIII.

     I've also talked with an individaul that has just about every lens Pinkham ever produced, and to Barbara Lowry at Cooke Optics. 

     I was also able to correspond fellow photographer w/Jim Galli, who has owned several Petzval lenses, and who spotted the fact that some of the original P&S lenses Series I lenses were 'dead ringers' for the same Petzval lenses that Jim has/has owned, even to the extent that the parts were interchangeable between lenses. 

     I've read everything on the 'Cameraeccentric' website regarding the P&S, several times.

    So I'll voice my thoughts and what I think I've learned about these lenses, and if I'm wrong about a point, by all means, please show me where, and I'll be greatful for the correction and increase in knowledge.

    My understanding of the fabrication of Pinkham & Smith line of lenses and particularly at the beginning, was that these lenses were handmade, to where no one lens was the same, the softness could vary, also, these lenses were made to specification, and, depending on the materials Pinkham had at hand, the materials that went into the making of a lens could vary from the last lens fabricated and/or the next.   The engraving was also different from lens to lens.

    I'm aware of a P&S SA Doublet SerIII that doens't look ANYTHING like mine, and yet they are basically the same lens.  I was tipped off by John Van Skelton in my corresponding w/him about the time period in which the earlier Pinkhams were made, that in terms of 'period correctness', and particularly in light of the fact that some of these lenses were built to specification, that a Seris III like mine had started life out w/its barrel 'blacked off'.  He also explained what 'blacked off' meant, that in those days when the earlier P&S lenses were fabricated, that they weren't 'painted' as we understand the process today, but that the barrels of some lenses were 'blacked off' in another type of coating process.

    From what I believe I now know, and from what I've read, my understanding of what P&S produced early on has changed.  Jim Galli, a devotee of soft focus/portrait lenses, and who has owned quite a few Petzvals has spotted a P&S Series I which was bought and sold over ebay, which was essentially a Petzval design w/P&S engravings.  I wouldn't dare to presume to know if selling a Petzval design under the P&S name was a common practice for P&A, or something that seldom occured, I only bring this up because I found out about it, and I thought that it needed to be added to the discussion.

    I would invite those interested in hard data on the various P&S designs to peruse cameraeccentric.com and their catalog pages and spec sheets on the P&S lenses, for specifics.

     In terms of the time period in which these lenses were produced, and how an individual lens could vary from what you saw in a catalog, I can bring up the example of my acquisition of a Gundlach Achromatic Meniscus lens where the Gundlach catalog displayed on the 'Cameraeccentric' website, shows the glass clearly behind the iris diaphragm, whereas the glass on my lens was positioned in front of the iris.

    Also, and I don't have any hard evidence for this, but I believe that at some point time there had to have been some use of the SA Double SerIII by Alvin Langdon Coburn, since he was the one who instigated the creation of the SA Doublet Series III.  They formulated this lens for him, and I find it hard to believe that he never used it.

      Alvin Langdon Coburn and others loaned out their P&S lenses at their whim and whimsy,  now considering  the individuality and possible variation of each interation, and the passage of so much time, I don't think we'll ever get an exact picture of who used what.

     I'll close with this, I believe that the individual differences between these lenses were on occasion, as great as the differences between the various types of lenses created over the years, and I don't know if you can say that the 'look' any particular lens represents what other lenses of that same 'make' will do.  The look of a VQ will vary from from VQ to VQ, the look of a Synthetic will vary from Synthetic to Synthetic, and I believe that on occasion, the difference will be as much as the difference between the VQ and a Synthetic. 

     Other may disagree with the above and I may in fact be wrong with making some of these assumptions, but I base these assumptions on the my personal experience with my P&S S.A. Doublet SerIII, NoIII as opposed to what's been said about the SerII and SerIII lenses.  Looking through this lenses is incredible, and it has the absolute softest pallette that I've ever seen through a groundglass.  I can't imagine ANY lens being softer, or any of the earlier P&S interations being softer that my example.  Don't forget, these were handmade and handrubbed lenses. 

     I don't know if I can accurately describe the difference between what I see through the groundglass w/my S.A. Doublet, and my other lenses, including the P&S VQ IV, but I'll try.   With most of the images you see in Jim Galli's above mentioned article, the glow is most prominent around the highlights, w/some of the glow depending upon the lens, looking 'kind of greasy', w/the SerIII, the glow from the highlights extends from the highlights throughout the whole frame, and it is 'wet looking', it extends a kind of a 'moist veil' over everything, it's most pleasurable to look at. 
 

     Below are the 'before and after' images of my Series III, although I don't think the images give you a true impression of how much glass has gone into this lens, this is one HUGE hunk of glass!!!!. 
 

I'll ad a little flavor, I found this ad in the bottom corner of this newspaper........Here's the caption w/the name of the paper.....

.......The Tech. Boston; Mass., March 16, 1912'

.Here's the ad.......................