Rodenstock-Kinemar 1.7/5cm, a smooth bokeh projection lens

[alex ph]

Got this one for cheap, especially as compared to some current or recent BIN options which seem to me frankly exagerated. The "5cm" marking makes an implicit reference to pre-war lens designations, but it does not seem to be that old. Besides, 16mm consumer projectors did not come to market before the IIWW ended, right?

The image rendering is nice. Rodenstock colours are there. Sharpness is on the rather mild but very detailed and pleasant side. And bokeh is really smooth. The image circle is smaller than APS-C which differs the lens from its other 50mm projection brothers ans sisters designed for 16mm film. I tried some, such as Elmo, Som Berthiot, Benoist Berthiot and some others which have heavy swirl on the edges, and not corners clipped to black.

I find the image converted in BW especially attractive.

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One of them in colour

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The shots were taken with Sony Nex and contrast is slightly pushed.

[calvin83]

If you lens has SN near 2.000.000, it is made in ~1945.

[alex ph]

Thank you, Calvin! You guess well, the serial number is 2 060 XXX.

[alex ph]

I took some outdoors close-ups in a perfectly grey day, as if it was done to produce grey cards for calibrating white balance. The lens gives at times less contrasty image than I'd like to, and in a grey day it feels even stronger. So, I pushed contrasts a bit more sometimes.

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#5 A 100% crop from the previous

[alex ph]

The lens has a pretty weird field curvature. A complete defocus off the centre leaves decent corners. Here comes a result of gradual refocusing.

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[alex ph]

Some more shots with this lens, now converted to BW via simple desaturation and then tinted to sepia.

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[lumens pixel]

Maybe lack of contrast is due to overexposure. Hard vignetting leads the camera to overexpose the center.

[alex ph]

You must be right! When I negatively compensate exposure, like in #5 of the last series, shots look more dramatic, even though corners are even more clipped. I will try it with in-camera exposure compensation.

[alex ph]

Just some more arbitrary shots

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