1912 TT&H Cooke Anastigmat f4.5 5 3/8"

[iangreenhalgh1]

Quite stunning for a lens made in 1912. Uncoated of course, a triplet, aperture is sadly stuck at f8. Sharpness is very good although maybe not quite as good as a good tessar, what is amazing to me is the contrast for an uncoated lens.

No PP on any of these, NEX-3 in Program mode.


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[hifisapi]

how did you mount an old barrel lens to the nex?

[iangreenhalgh1]

Bellows and electrical tape.

[Orio]

Good clear results indeed.

[Attila]

Perhaps best result what I seen from a lens what made before 1930, congrats!

[fermy]

Impressive result indeed. I guess the fact that it's a central crop @ f8 of a medium FL does help.

[Nesster]

Brilliant, Ian, Brilliant!

[iangreenhalgh1]

Cheers guys. TT&H made the very highest quality lenses, the consensus opinion back in the day was that the per-eminent lens makers were TT&H and Zeiss and everyone else was competing for third place.

There's a few other examples of really old TT&H lenses adapted onto modern digicams here and there on the net, they are similarly impressive, Veijo Vilva posted a series shot with a TT&H Cooke Aviar a few years ago, a 1920s one and that was a really impressive lens.

It would be great to use this lens on my 5x7 camera but I doubt a 135mm triplet will cover 5x7, I can try it on my 2x3 Century Graphic though.

[luisalegria]

I have a 5 3/4" f/4.5 TTH Cooke Triplet from a Graflex, and it doesn't do at all as well, but I was using it wide open.

http://forum.mflenses.com/cooke-triplet-5-3-4-146mm-f-4-5-from-graflex-t35864,highlight,%2Bcooke.html

[iangreenhalgh1]

I think we have the same lens Luis, I'll check what the text on the front of mine says exactly, it has the Series on it.

[SXR_Mark]

I'm really impressed with the contrast in these shots, Ian. I expect your mounting bellows and tubes have very good internal light trapping to kill scatter from the large image circle.

I have just acquired an old, uncoated, Rapid Rectilinear lens of about 8.5-inch FL. I mounted it with bellows and extension tubes and the contrast was feeble. But, the insides of the extension tubes are just ribbed, black-anodised aluminium. They are quite glossy. Looking down the tubes with the lens mounted and pointed at a lamp I could see a huge amount of scatter from the inside of the tube as the large cone of light from the lens impacted on the tube walls. I have now lined the tubes with black, flocked paper and things look much better.

[iangreenhalgh1]

Hiya Mark

If that RR doesn't work out for you, I'd be interested in trying it, got a few things to swap for it if so.

If a lens resolves 45lp/mm in the centre, it will produce nice results on the NEX-3 sensor in my experience. A lot of large format lenses will reach that or close to that in the centre so should be sharp enough on the NEX or a similar sensor. All that stray light from the unused portion of the image circle probably does reduce contrast a bit, but with a digital image, a click or two in photoshop fixes that.

[philslizzy]

A nice lens Ian I have an old large format lens mounted on a helical capable of great results. I must give it a good go.

[hifisapi]

[iangreenhalgh1]

I wasn't referring to veiling flare. Try it for yourself, take an uncoated lens such as a prewar Zeiss Sonnar 4/135 or Sonnar 2/50, as long as you are conscious of the angle of the sun, you can produce images that, after a modest contrast boost in photoshop are exactly the same as you would get with a later, coated version of the same lens. I know, I have done exactly this. A large part of why the images I posted from the TT&H triplet have god contrast is that I am accustomed to working with uncoated lenses and subconsciously avoid any shots that have an unfavourable sun angle. In all of them, the angle between sun and senor plane was never less than 90 degrees. If you follow this rule of thumb, uncoated lenses don't often demonstrate veiling flare as they are simple designs where internal baffling can be simple and effective. A hood of course, does help, but is far less important than the angle of the sun is. The times I have run into veiling flare have generally been with coated lenses, especially zooms and ultrawides. Again, the solution is to be mindful of the sun angle. I have had several zoom lenses that were very prone to veiling flare, often the brightness of the sky to the top of the frame was sufficient to induce veiling flare.

I might have inadvertently bumped up the price of these old TT&H triplets, this one in poor condition with scratched glasses went for 10x what mine with perfect glass cost me:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/T-P-COOKE-ANASTIGMAT-6-7-8-INCHES-F-4-5-LENS-FAULTY-/360682551279?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEWAX%3AIT&nma=true&si=yBsxTIwyEswRl2isLc5WdPUDGlE%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc