Got my Heliar

[vilva]

I finally succeeded to get a Heliar at a reasonable price. It is a 1928 f/4.5 10.5cm and came mounted on a more or less broken Voigtlander 6x9 in a pre-1920 dial-set Compur shutter. After an initial test I was a little bit disappointed in the bokeh, all the praise on the net seemed just so much hype, at least when shooting at f/4.5. Anyway, I mounted it and spent most of Saturday in Tallinn, Estonia, shooting at f/8, some 200 RAW frames now waiting for conversion and sorting. An initial look at some frames seems to indicate that the lens is quite OK, not a pixel peeping lens, but the resolution is quite adequate for reasonable sized prints, the dynamic range is wide enough, and the colors are nice. I'll post a couple of selections later on.

Yesterday and today I did some shooting at the full aperture, some city scenes and vegetation. At f/4.5 the lens is rather on the soft side, and the bokeh may be a little bit queer for the street so I'll stick to f/8 and other lenses for street use. The vegetation shots are another matter, however, curved lines suit the Heliar bokeh. I'll post a few shots here, more shots are available at http://galactinus.net/vilva/retro/heliar_bokeh.html, it pays to have a look.

Well, a horse isn't exactly vegetation, but...



(There was some wind so exact focusing wasn't possible, but this shot was for the bokeh, not the foreground.)

Some sun-lit maple leaves about 8m behind the target show green highlights:



The distant group of trees goes nicely soft, the foreground leaves are very present:



A lilac:



There is one problem with this kind of bokeh: the subtle shading looks quite different on different screens, and the results of optical printing would very much depend on the grade of the paper - a single negative could be used to provide many very different prints.

I think the Heliar would also be a very nice portrait lens when used wide open with a suitable background.

Veijo

PS. here are two shots from Tallinn to exhibit the performance under very different conditions, no contrast adjustments:

First, very strong back-lighting: Food for the Leica



Quite good performance by an uncoated lens. The Heliar has 5 elements in three groups, it is a modified triplet with split outer elements. These f/4.5 versions are supposed to have a rather low contrast, the f/3.5 versions may be slightly better. Then some stronger color, the vignetting is due to my hand-held lens shade:



Not too bad.

[luisalegria]

I have been coming to the conclusion that these very old lenses are just not adequate for close-focus work, even if they are quite sharp otherwise.

I have been playing with my Ansco, a Bell&Howell (from @1900), a Kodak Anastigmat @1940, and all are reasonably good at distance, but are impossible to get sharp for the typical flower picture at 1 meter or less.

The flower shots are not good quality or personality tests for this type of lens.

The proper test for these may be from 2-3m-infinity.

[Orio]

Maybe it's too early to judge, but from what I see this lens is not on the same top level of your Radionar or Cooke.

[vilva]

[vilva]

[Nesster]

I would imagine this lens is killer on its intended MF frame size. I have a Skopar that I don't really want to decapitate - I'd rather use it on the original folder. But it too has some of that quality, hard to explain but the photos just make more sense than with many other lenses.

With the close up work, it's not just the DOF, I think, but also the absolute resolving power of the lens - each little detail becomes that much more important. I'd think that even with narrow DOF if the OOF transition is well done, you just end up with a nice rounded rendering. Perhaps this is the trade-off that made the Heliar famous - with a larger negative.

[estudleon]

Hello vilva

You have a Schneider radionar. It's a triplet, 3 elements, without the correction of the 4th element for improve the borders of the image.
What is the rendition? May be best in B&W-consideration of the year of production?

Perhaps the tessars are much contrastier (ie 150 mm). What's your opinion?

I question because Ican buy one of both.

Thank you

[Ingo]

You know, I use the 3.5/10.5 Heliar, and my findings are completly different. This type of lense has a low edge contrast, therefore correct focussing is very difficult.

The resolution and sharpness is normaly two stops down absolut great, and wide open more as usefull. The Bokeh looks different to my 3,5/10,5cm Heliar.

In wich type of camera was your Heliar?

Ingo

[vilva]

[vilva]

[Ingo]

[estudleon]

[quote]Perhaps the tessars are much contrastier (ie 150 mm). What's your opinion?[/quote]

There is no appreciable difference between the contrast of an uncoated triplet and an uncoated Tessar, both have the same number (6) of air-to-glass surfaces, just like this Heliar here. Aldis Uno (also on my pages) has a slightly better contrast due to having 4 air-to-glass surfaces only, that is, the real f/7.7 Uno, not the f/4.5, which is just a triplet. For more contrast you'll have to get a post-WWII coated triplet or Tessar, but then you might as well get some M42 version instead of a folder lens - I use these old uncoated lenses because they are different.

Veijo[/quote]

Yes, you're right. The coat let "born" the planar design, eclipsed by the contrastier triplets .

Thanks for the page, greats lenses and instructive shots.

[LucisPictor]

This is a lens I am not as impressed by as with your other lenses.
It still is astonishing (each time again) that you can use such an old lens on a modern DSLR.

[estudleon]

[quote="LucisPictor"]This is a lens I am not as impressed by as with your other lenses.

It's seem to me to be an excelent portrait lens, with very good tratransition from in-focus to out-of-focus, and this may be very nice in a face's shot.
Regards.

[Orio]

Leon, in a message there must be an equal number of "open quote" and "close quote" tags, else they will not appear correctly.

[estudleon]

Thank you, I will take care.

[vilva]