Topic: What is this lens

[irv_b]

Hi guys
My wife came home with an extinction meter, a kodak instamatic 500 some vericolour slide film and this lens., from a charity shop
What type of camera is it for? It has on the front element from what I can make out  "DOPP AGSTIGMATT SERIES 3 DAGOR 135MM CP GOERZ BERLIN No 285485"
So over to you wise people - inform me :-)
Ta very much, Irv
Oops forgot to say it zooms out!

[ManuelL]

I googled and found an old ebay auction for a similar looking lens: front part Doppel Anastigmat with an extension tube to fit it on a Leica mount.

[Ed Wenn]

I think it's for a drop-back, full movement, digital pinhole tintype iPhone which runs on hydrogen fuel cells and only works during a leap year. But make sure you don't attach the lens to the Mark II because that lens is only good for the Mark III series onwards. Anything prior to the Mark III resulted in very curdled custard. You have been warned.

Ask me another. I'm good with stuff like this.

[Francois]

Here's what I could find

The Dagor was Goerz's most renowned lens construction, a symmetrical Anastigmat with 6 elements in two groups. It was designed by Emil Von Höegh who also had tried to win Zeiss as its maker. In 1892, after Zeiss' negative reply, he had luck that he could replace the chief lens designer of Goerz who had recently died.

The lens was first made as the Doppel Anastigmat Series III, and renamed Dagor in 1904.[1] Dagor is an abbreviation of "Doppel-Anastigmat GOeRz". The original patent describes an f/8 lens;[2] Dagors were later made as f/6.8 in shorter focal lengths, and f/7.7 in longer ones.[1] The patent describes two different designs: one in which each cemented half of the lens is a pair of positive lenses enclosing a negative one (this is the Dagor), and another in which each half is a pair of negative lenses enclosing a positive one; this is the general design used at about the same time by Steinheil for the Orthostigmat. Voigtländer's Collinear is the same.[1] Production licences were given to lens maker Ross in London and optician Karl Fritsch in Vienna.

In 1926 the German branch of Goerz was saved from bankruptcy by being merged with ICA, Contessa-Nettel and Ernemann to form Zeiss Ikon. This had major consequences for the company; the Carl Zeiss company held a majority stake and demanded that the other firms end their lens production. This was the end of the famed Dagor lenses, at least in Europe. Some other production was kept alive in the Goerz factory Berlin, but for the Zeiss Ikon brand. An Austrian branch of C. P. Goerz was still active in the 1950s, introducing an astonishing little subminiature reflex camera with six-element Helgor lens, the Minicord.

http://www.butkus.org/chinon/goerz/goerz.htm (1916 Goerz catalog)

From what I figured, Goerz was very popular for its focal plane shutter. The lens is probably a collapsible model with some extension tubes added so that it can be used on a regular camera (m-42 or m-39). In all the stuff they made, I'm pretty sure the lens was intended to put on their Ango Reflex camera as it's the only one who has no bellows (and thus use lens focusing), though it could also have been made for their Klapp cameras which also had a focal plane shutter.

http://www.collection-appareils.fr/x/html/appareil-10978-Goerz_Anschutz%20Klappkamera%20mod.1.html
http://www.collection-appareils.fr/x/html/appareil-10979-Goerz_Reflex%20Ango.html

So that gives you a bit of an idea about how old the thing is!

[irv_b]

Thanks Manuel and  Francois. I'll keep hold of it and see how useful it will be in the future,  who knows maybe it'll encourage me to build a camera of sorts!
Ed if you come across a mark III that works let me know! I'm sure I could see a way to giving you a finders fee

[Francois]

The good things about this lens are the built-in focus and the large film coverage. It could easily fit a Speed Graphic and any medium format camera that uses a focal plane shutter. Not to mention fitting it to a 35mm would be a cinch.

[irv_b]

Excuse my ignorance but what would the advantages of fitting it to a 35mm slr if it's really for an LF camera, sharper image?

[Francois]

You won't get a sharper image (in reality, it may even be less sharp due to the circle of confusion... but that's technical stuff), but you'll definitely get a larger projected image. This means that you can make an adapter that has lens movements similar to a view camera and do all the tilts and shifts... but without the bulk.
Also, 135mm is a nice portrait lens focal length that won't distort or compress the facial features too much.

And you may also get some really cool bokeh as a bonus.