Today we're going to talk about brass and aluminium. This lens is made of brass and aluminium. We've done our education on the materials side of things, and now we're going to please the linguists - it's a Hugo Meyer Atelier Schnellarbeiter 310mm f3, which the translator peculiarly translates as "fast worker."

• The term "speed" in photographic jargon embodies aperture - the larger aperture, the faster the lens (because you can use faster shutter speeds, duh!!).

Anyway, this lens was born sometime between 1910-1914 (soon afterwards there were troubles with aluminium shortages caused by WWI). It was the absolute top of its time and the showcase of the Hugo Meyer company, which apart from the absolutely insane f3 aperture (only a few manufacturers in history managed to reach or perhaps surpass this mark) is also evidenced by the use of selected materials ensuring low weight despite its size or the not very common presence of a really-lot-of-blades aperture.

• You're not going to impress anyone with an f3 aperture these days. But back then? Hell yeah. Plus - today's lenses can barely cover a few centimeters and even at that, they get out of breath. This behemoth will cover about 18x24cm and believe me - f3 aperture on FF or APS-C is really not the same as on large format. Here, that means you have a depth of field (DoF) of about a millimeter or so and hitting what you want sharp requires the hands of a surgeon and a patient (ideally dead or inanimate) subject to photograph (the ladies below were live during the shooting and I hereby pay tribute to them). If you wanted to convert the aperture on this format to 35mm (FF), you'd come up with some number from dreamland - f0.5 or some such monstrosity). Impressive.

The sharpness in the centre (the centre of the picture, not the city, it shoots sharply even on the edges of towns and villages, haha) is absolutely nuts for something made 110 years ago - towards the edges then stands out the pleasing swirl bokeh typical for petzval designs.

• I'll probably bring some coal to Newcastle, but just to be safe: bokeh is the out-of-focus part of the image behind the focused object. The more open the aperture, the blurrier the background. The quality and shape of the bokeh depends on the construction of the glass, the shape of the aperture or even the number of blades. The more you close the aperture, the more the bokeh disappears.
• Swirl is the ability of the lens to "spin" the bokeh in the background - you can see the swirl effect in the second photo. Some designs are famous for it, some don't have it at all. The strength of the swirl effect, like bokeh, is closely tied to the open aperture, the direction of the light, and the ruggedness of the background. It is actually an optical defect of the uncorrected design. And we thanks for these defects.

You can guess the obvious drawback compared to my girly hand - it's big and when adapting to the camera I got to the very limit of the size of the board for mounting on the front standard. I had prepared a whole list of Best Of jokes on the theme "The bigger the lens, the better the photographer", the popular "Even with a small clown you can play a big circus" or the timeless variation on the theme "Hehe, what are you compensating with this thing?"Anyway, the dimensions correspond to the fact that at Hugo Meyer they cut a piece of pipeline, stuffed it with glass and engraved "Atelier" in big letters on the chassis, so that even the last idiot gifted with the art of the alphabet would realize that this is a lens for ATELIER, that it does NOT belong to the streets. So naturally I take it exclusively to the outside. To end on a positive note - don't despair, anyone can indeed take photos. Even a piece of pipe.