Have you heard about the "Citograph"?

[LucisPictor]

Long name: "C.P. Goertz Citograph 35mm Hyperfocal"



I do have a prototype here. Today, I took the first shots with it on my M8...





It a hyperfocal f/8 lens with 35mm FL and Leica M mount. Since it is not rangefinder coupled, it also doesn't move the parallax compensation f the Leica. So you need to learn how to compose with it. One of the first shots show this:



You might ask, why stick such a simple lens to a Leica M body? Well, I just got the lens, but I can already tell that shooting with it is some kind of refreshing...

It's developed as a "one-man-project" via Kickstarter: >> click <<

[calvin83]

This is not a "one-man-project". The founder is working on net SE is the parent company of Meyer Optik USA in Atlanta, GA https://de.linkedin.com/in/benedikt-hartmann-a19832127.

[iangreenhalgh1]

Somehow seems wrong to put a 'toy' lens on a Leica. No focusing, no aperture control, seems pointless to me.

[LucisPictor]

[calvin83]

The marketing of this project, using ancient and well-known brand name , is exactly the same the Meyer and Biotar projects. The product has nothing to do with the original Hypergon. May be we are able to make a lens using similar obsolete brand ourselves?

[iangreenhalgh1]

Oh, so I can set up a kickstarter project and sell stuff under the Dallmeyer, Ross, Taylor, Taylor & Hobson, Wray, Kershaw, Aldis and Micro Precision Products names?

If so, I could resurrect the once great British optics industry!

Here's one of my early prototypes of an ultra-ultra-ultra-wide lens:



Maybe I'll call it the 'Taylor, Taylor & Hobson Hyperwide'....

[cooltouch]

Ya got CPO converters, so your project's gotta be good. (I'm a big CPO fan)

[iangreenhalgh1]

Yup, I collect em, got over a dozen of various types, still waiting for one of the 0.35x fisheyes to come along cheap. When these things were new they were hundreds, even thousands of dollars, the motion picture industry uses em to shoot movies. There's three of them there plus a Schneider Superwide Aspheric, so there's quite a large dollars worth if they were still worth what they originally cost.

That's a Yashica ML 2.8/24 at the bottom, then there's a couple of achromatic dioptres, then the Schneider, then the three Centuries. It produces a 5mm focal length and it does actually work, but it's very heavy and not very practical.

Here's a shot from above with my hand to show the scale of the thing.

[Gardener]

Is it one of these?

[/img]

[luisalegria]

With all those Century things from Los Angeles, that would be an American lens then?

Fleeing now

[kds315*]

I do have a real HYPERGON lens, 26mm focal length, from a military optical system and that is really good!

Here some shots taken with it (incl. some cross-eye 3D):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kds315/albums/72157627599515433



Does great 3D with pop:

[iangreenhalgh1]

[LucisPictor]

[LucisPictor]

[calvin83]

Thank you. I think it might be the right time to make something interesting.

[LucisPictor]

[iangreenhalgh1]

We already have:

https://rectilux.com/

[Sjak]

[LucisPictor]

[iangreenhalgh1]

But being fixed focus and a fixed f8, it's the same concept even if glass rather than plastic - turn the camera into a point n shoot, which might be interesting for candid street shooting.

[LucisPictor]

[iangreenhalgh1]

Well, let's hope it's dirt cheap, like the Olympus 'body cap' lenses, otherwise, I just don't see the point.

[Slalom]

https://alikgriffin.com/sony-fe-lenses-the-ultimate-list/

Meyer Optic Sony E-Mount

Meyer Optic is a German company that makes some very high quality lenses that are often funded by kickstarter.

Good new is, they make a few Sony full frame lenses.

Can check out what they’re doing: https://www.meyer-optik-goerlitz.com/en-us/
Lens Name Filter Threads Order Links
Nocturnus 50mm f0.95 II Ø67mm B&H
Trioplan 50mm f/2.9 — B&H
Primoplan 58mm f1.9 Ø37mm B&H
Primoplan 75mm f1.9 Ø52mm B&H
Trioplan 100mm f/2.8 Ø52mm B&H
Trioplan 100mm f/2.8 Titanium Ø52mm B&H

[LucisPictor]

Yes, thank you. I guess we all know that about "new" Meyer Optik.
Their lenses have been subject to several discussions and they obviously divide opinions - and the very same applies for Goertz.

There are those who love that there is a new company who offers some new manual lenses. They don't really mind about the price.

Then there are those who loath what Meyer (new) does. They condemn them because of the use of the "classic" name and they accuse them of ripping off the customers by demanding way too high prices.

The thing is, both groups have good arguments. The second group is closer to being right when it comes to the "re-branded" Meyer lenses, although also those lenses are not just re-branded, but hand-picked and rebuilt with critical elements replaced.

Fact is that you cannot produce a lens in Germany - and the "real" new Meyer lenses, the re-designs of the vintage ones are all calculated, designed and built in Germany - and sell it for €400,-. That just doesn't work.

In the same way there is a huge diffenrence between those plastic body-cap lenses and this Citograph which feels very solid. And this is what this thread is all about. Not Meyer!
It's mainly that new (or old) approach to taking photos that puzzles the photography scene, I guess.
How can anybody spend a considerable amount of money on a lens that cannot be focused or stopped down when everything you can do with the Citograph, yoou also could do with a 35mm Leica lens for instance?
That's a very good point. And still, it is different to shoot with the Citograph somehow. Hard to say how and why, really.

I will bring this lens when we go to London next week and see if I can get some snaps with it.

[iangreenhalgh1]

It's a toy lens, just a rich man's version of the toy lens concept. I don't like that they are using a prestigious name from the past, just comes across as a cynical attempt to add perceived value to what looks like a recreation of the cheapest, bottom end of the market concept from the past.

There's obviously been little expense here in design work, no helicoid or aperture mechanisms, just a simple fixed aperture lens. What's the optical formula? You could use a simple triplet design as it's fixed aperture, so again, no design expense there as fixed aperture triplets have been around a very long time and the designs long established, for instance, Voigtlander were selling a fixed f8 Voigtar triplet on their cheapest cameras right up until they stopped producing cameras in the late 70s, although they managed to make it focusable, unlike this Citograph.



It's just a piece of metal with some tiny glass elements, most likely no exotic glass types, very little assembly needed so even with German labour costs, where's the expense in producing this thing? The biggest part of the cost of producing a new lens is the design phase and as I said, what design work was actually needed to replicate something that was bottom end and common as muck not that long ago.

Thinking about it, if it is a triplet, or even a tessar, then you could make this Citograph with just 7 parts - the metal body, the three glass elements, two spacers and a screw-in retaining ring.

The tiny lens concept has been done so much better already, Miyazaki-San of MS Optical has produced a whole range of beautifully designed and engineered lenses that have both focus and aperture and are no larger than the Citograph.