Let me preface what I have to say by saying that the j-peg image you see here doesn't do justice to the actual print of this image which is much, much sharper, and has a greater sense of fidelity, but I've uploaded it anyway to give a flavor of this lenses pallette. 

    Jim Galli modified this lens, and I'm very pleased w/the resulting look, the lens has a tendency to make the highlights 'pop', and then transition abruptly/very quickly to deep, dark, 'velvet' like shadows.   The look is dramatic, and I get a sense of immediacy from the print of this image.  The lens doesn't have the greyish 'murky' kind of pallette of some soft focus/portrait  lenses, and the lens has some of the same nuances and values as the Cooke PS945 when the Cooke lens is stopped down somewhat.

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............

     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.