Petzval designs, soft-focus, pictorialist lenses… Whatever you wish for. Innovations from the middle of the 20th century and from the depths of the century before. Back then, glass was more glassy and brass was more brassy. Nobody cared about size or weight. Character and bokeh were what mattered, and there is plenty of both here. Leave your pixel-peeping obsession at home and prepare for the perfectly imperfect. These lenses don’t capture photographs. They paint them.
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Kodak Portrait
When you hold it in your hand, you can’t shake the feeling that despite its impressive 30.5 cm focal length, something still seems suspiciously absent. It gives off the vibe of being cobbled together by some ancient craftsman using a toilet paper roll and grandma’s reading magnifier. Still, folk wisdom stands: never judge a lens by how few optical elements it has.
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Wollensak Raptar
Lenses with razor-sharp rendering are a dime a dozen, and plenty of them can sketch out a pleasant bokeh. Finding a piece with real character—whatever that even means—can be tricky, but doable. But what about a specimen that bundles all of that together and adds a downright badass name on top? Step right up and behold the Raptar!
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Aldis Anastigmat
Some things and manufacturers, despite their undeniable qualities and benefits, fail to make their way into wider awareness and so, popularly speaking, fly under the radar. And this is the case of Aldis, a company living in the shadows of the hegemons of the time, which would be a shame to overlook.
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Hugo Meyer Atelier Schnellarbeiter
We have tiny lenses. A little bigger. Then a medium one, a larger one, and the largest. And then there are the very biggest ones—and this is one of them. The internal code names are "big beast," "leviathan," and "hand me that thing."