Beats me, of course, but that's why one can attribute magical properties to lenses and make them your favorites for what may only be happenstance. Currently in love with an uncoated 210mm Goerz Doeppel Anastigmat Series III f/6.8 (Dagor precursor) based on a single 8x10 image taken over the summer. But the same scene shot from the same spot with a host of different lenses (including the 300mm Heliar and a state of the current art Schneider 210mm Super Symmar XL) didn't come close to the glow of the DAIII image. Probably luck and magic, maybe change in the lighting on a partly cloudy afternoon, but I choose to credit the lens as the most readily identifiable and verifiable difference between how the different images were made. Otherwise the camera (Canham Traditional 8x10) was the same, the film type (8x10 Fuji Pro 160S) and holders were the same, all film processed at the same time by the same lab (Precision Imaging, now Phoenix Imaging, Chicago), scanned by me in the same fashion on the same scanner (Epson V750) and handled in pretty similar ways in photoshop (color inverted with CF systems ColorNeg plug-in), printed on the same paper (17x22 Ilford Gold Fiber Silk) with the same printer and ink (Epson 3800) and admired (though only by me, alas) under the same lighting conditions (my mess of a "study"). Yet there are very clear differences between the different renderings (a 19" Red Dot Artar produced the sharpest image) and I love the look of the Goerz image. So do I know it's the lens? No, but I think there's a pretty good chance it's a contributing factor. But it's still probably mostly magic. Best Larry Segil On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Dennis Purdy <dlp4777@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Dec 4, 2009, at 09:02, Laurence Segil wrote: > > I would cram a Heliar in there for those specially lit scenes where its > rendering of the highlights of an image cannot be equaled > > > > How do you determine the degree of affect of the lens design vs the varous > film curves (depending on processing and exposure) vs various paper's > abilities to render both highlights and shadow detail with good contrast all > relative to the given situation and lighting in the scene? > Dennis > =
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NLF St. Mary's Pond 210mm DA III.jpg
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