I was rather excited when stumbling upon the Ricoh Riconar 55mm f/2.2. It's a soft focus lens in cheap kit lens drag and I thought I'd skinned a Fat Calf.
I've been looking for a lens with gentle optical incorrections. The made to purpose "soft focus" lenses for Minolta, Pentax, Canon, Leica, etc, etc, etc, are all way too soft for me. The effect doesn't whisper it's presence, it hits me over the head with a hammer and announces "I am a Soft Fekk'n Focus Lens, fer Gawds! sake!!" The Ricoh, on the other hand, appears to offer a controllable level of softness, much like early large format portrait and pictorialist lenses.
Having struck gold once, the experience motivated me to look for other old first optical element/group focusing lenses for 35mm format cameras.
Bonzo Din shared the fact the a German made Steinheil comes with a front element focusing lens. It's called the Steinheil 50mm f/2.8 Auto-Cassaron. Oh boy! quick as a bunny I found and purchased one. The aperture and focusing ring were sticky, so I disassembled the simple lens as far as I could, applied denatured ETOH to everything trying to unbind the bound bits (kinky! you say). Cleaned and lubed the focusing threads. The Steinheil became usable.
What I found is The lens is an implementation of the classic Cooke triplet. This Steinheil is indeed first element focusing. The second and third elements are fixed, one on each side of the aperture. The Steinheil's aperture control mechanism is as simple as can be. Lens coatings are applied only to the outer surfaces front and back. Surfaces on the inside of the lens are uncoated. The lens is obviously designed for lowest cost manufacturing, just like the Ricoh 55mm f/2.2 Riconar. Cheap, cheap, cheap.
Once my aging mind was coming unstuck, I remembered that Saint Ansel used a Turner Reich 12-1/4" triple convertible as well as a Cooke 12-1/4" series XV triple convertible early on. I've inspected prints made from negatives exposed using those lenses and the results are quite good.
In use I've found the softness generated to by the Steinheil to be "gentler" than the Ricoh's. The German lens is very well behaved across the field. The extreme edges can be a little soft until stopped way down, but nothing compared with the Ricoh. The field is as flat as can be.
My tail was wagging like one on a medium sized dog.
Trying to better understand what I was looking at, I found I've forgotten more than a fair bit of triple element three group history. Wikipedia to the rescue. Cooke designed the earliest examples of the triplet. See - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooke_triplet
Now I was really happy. I felt I'd stumbled upon something. Something secret. Something delicious. Something...
Except. Except. Except. I didn't. All too often late to the party, I find everyone who's anyone already knows about three element three group Cooke design lenses for small formats.
It turns out the Germans, French, English, and Americans were cranking out Cooke triplets by the boats load! for smaller format 620, 120, and 35mm cameras. The Germans continued this well and deep into the 35mm SLR times (1950's through 1980's).
Ricoh's 55mm that I was first smitten with is actually a four element four group lens. So I'll not count it in the list that follows. Simply remember it's cheap, widely available, and can be fun for use in soft focus work.
From Germany, I see the following Pentax M42 thread mount Cooke lenses -
- E. Ludwig Meritar 50mm f/2.9 - East Germany
- ISCO Göttingen Iscotar 50 mm f/2.8 - Edixa M42 spec
- ISCO Göttingen Iscovitar 50 mm f/2.8 - Pracktica/Pentax M42 spec
- Meyer-Optik Görlitz Domiplan 50mm f/2.8 <- Soap Bubble Bokeh!!! Ick. Ack.
- Steinheil 50mm f/2.8 Auto-Cassaron
Browsing old catalogs shows these lenses were available under different model namings and different mounts. Some lenses outside the M42 list above are more easily adaptable than others and I'm sure anyone with a keen interest in such things can quickly sort out what to do and which lenses merit attention.
I may post more on the topic after an ISCO arrives.
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