Biotar Pictures

[doubs43]

Monday I received a 58mm f/2 Biotar lens in M42 mount. I quickly learned that the rear shroud interferred with the pin actuation plate in the Spotmatic, Singlex and Praktica so that left me with the hopes that it would work on the *ist-DS Pentax DSLR. It does and here are a couple of images taken at f/5.6. The flower has been cropped and sharpened a little while the top picture of the dove is a 100% crop from the full frame below it and each has been slightly sharpened. No other modifications have been done to them.

Late Bloomer


Dove on a Bird Bath


Walker

[PeterW]

Not a lot I can say about the performance of the Biotar, Walker. It's superb. Shame the rear shroud fouls the auto diaphragm plate on most M42 SLRs. Wonder what it was made for? Contax S or D perhaps?

I love the flower picture with the translucent centre petals and the dying trailing remains of what I assume were earlier blooming flowers.

PeterW

[doubs43]

Thank you, Peter. I'm impressed by the Biotar and agree that it's a shame it won't work on the cameras with the auto mechanism. I've come to realize, though, when using an M42 lens on a digital SLR without the auto capabilities that a preset is easier to use than an auto lens, even one with a manual/auto switch. Set the aperture needed, focus wide open and a quick twist without looking takes the aperture to the correct setting. Some may prefer the manual/auto switch but I don't think I would.

The Spider Lilly (think that's what it is) is a late bloom as you've seen that the first three have wilted. They bloom at night but don't last long in the Georgia heat, especially when we haven't had rain in awhile. The OOF areas are as smooth as one could possibly ask for.

I don't know if you read my earlier comments about this being an "unusual" Biotar but with your interest in East German optics, I thought you'd find it interesting.

Walker

[John Parry]

Walker

Those worked! Congrats on the first.

I'm puzzled about the incompatibility too. Takumars have something a little different - can't remember exactly what it is now, and the Mamiya-Sekors have a locking pin, but they will both work on other M42 cameras. Still, as soon as you use an adapter (got ones for the Eos and Yashica AF) you lose all the features of the lens anyway. Try it on a Praktica BC camera with an adapter. Should be good! I do that with my Pentacon M42s and they're much better lenses than the later BC ones.

Regards - John

[doubs43]

johnrparry said:

Walker

Those worked! Congrats on the first.

I'm puzzled about the incompatibility too. Takumars have something a little different - can't remember exactly what it is now, and the Mamiya-Sekors have a locking pin, but they will both work on other M42 cameras. Still, as soon as you use an adapter (got ones for the Eos and Yashica AF) you lose all the features of the lens anyway. Try it on a Praktica BC camera with an adapter. Should be good! I do that with my Pentacon M42s and they're much better lenses than the later BC ones.
Regards - John

John, thank you for the kind words. I, too, am puzzled by the incompatability of the Biotar on the film cameras. I tried it on a Spotmatic, Ricoh Singlex (Sears TLS model) and two Prakticas: a TL Super and an LTL. It prevented them all from firing because the plate couldn't move forward enough to release the mirror & shutter. Happily, it does work on the Pentax DSLR which was my purpose in getting it anyway.

The Pentax incompatability problem is with the lenses designed for the Spotmatic-F that have the lug and pin for wide open meter readings. (Most of the SMC lenses - but not all - fit that bill). If used on a camera with exposed screw heads on the face of the mount, the small pin - not the aperture pin - on the face that contacts the mount will drop into the screw head slot and bind the lens to the camera. It's almost impossible to remove the lens without a lot of sweat and words kids should never hear! Some people remove the pin.

While I have a number of Praktica cameras, I do not own a single B-series model. As you suggest, I've also read that the Practicar lenses for those cameras are not as good as the earlier ones. I know they don't bring as much money on ebay as the older lenses. I'm not certain if that's because they aren't as good or because fewer people have bodies that accept them.

Walker

[PeterW]

Walker,

Set the aperture needed, focus wide open and a quick twist without looking takes the aperture to the correct setting.

You sound like a reviewer when pre-set lenses first appeared - late 1940s? Can't remember now who was first with them, but the Contax F, developed from the D and later called a Pentacon F, was first with automatic diaphragm operation.

Sorry, but I'm not quite clear whether or not your Biotar has a preset diphragm or is just manual set.

Incidentally, it's ironic that Zeiss Ikon was the first to register the name Pentax, from (PENtaprism ConTAX), intending to use it on the renamed Contax F but then changed their mind, called it a Pentacon F (also from PENTAprism CONtax) and sold the Pentax name to Asahi. Maybe they thought, after losing the right to use the name Contax in certain markets, that including 'con' as part of the name suggested a Pentaprism Contax lineage better than 'tax'? I don't suppose we'll ever know. It all went by the board anyway when the various VEBs were grouped as Pentacon VEB.

Zeiss Ikon (not Praktica) was first to introduce the M42 mount with the Contax S in 1948. Design work started on this in 1938, but was shelved during the war. Kamera Werkstatten, who designed the Praktica, adopted it after they were told by Carl Zeiss just after the war that the M40 mount KW planned on using (and did on some cameras) wasn't quite large enough to use the auto-diaphragm pin Zeiss was designing for lenses with 24.5mm diameter rear elements (the 5cm Sonnar on the Contax II had a 23.9mm diameter rear element). I suspect Meyer in Gorlitz were also in on these discussions as they were pretty quick off the mark with pin-operated auto-diaphragm M42 lenses for the Praktica.

Carl Zeiss also licensed the patent on the pin-operated auto diaphragm to Asahi and other lens makers. The Contax F appeared in 1956, and I think I'm correct in saying that the first Pentax was 1957, so Asahi must have been in discussion with Zeiss for a fair time before that. In their history of the Pentax Asahi tries to suggest that the name Pentax came from a combination of Pentaprism and Asahiflex, but IMHO that's stretching things just a little.

People who refer to M42 as a 'Pentax' mount are a lot nearer the truth than they suspect! .

PeterW

[SidW]

Splendid, Walker. And I completely agree with you about the preset diaphragm, and I preferred it in the 1950s too, although the only auto system available then was the one that needed cocking and made a terrible noise, hardly discrete, and enough to frighten any subject away.

I haven't found an adapter yet for Exakta to EOS, so I haven't used any old lenses yet with a DSLR, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced it makes sense to take digital directly rather than go via film and scanning. I should have ditched my Canon film scanner long ago, everyone else seems to have done so before 2000, and I haven't seen them on sale for ages. I've just got a Nikon LS50, and the difference is incredible, but still not quite like digital directly. Your examples, and similar posted by others, are very convincing.

[John Farrell]

Older M42 lenses from Germany project further into the camera than modern lenses. My Practika LLC manual has a drawing of the old and new lenses, and a warning not to use the older lenses on the LLC.

[doubs43]

Hi Peter, the Biotar has a single collar pre-set system. There's a spring-loaded collar with a red dot that indicates the f-stop. Lift the collar forward against the spring pressure and set the red dot opposite the desired aperture. Lower the collar and turn it so that the dot is opposite f/2 and focus. Then turn the collar to the preset value where it will stop and go no further. The preset Primotar works exactly the same.

The original Asahiflex was introduced in 1952 and had a fixed waist level finder. The lenses were the same as for the Prakiflex; 40mm screw type I believe. That changed in 1957 when Asahi introduced the Pentax with pentaprism and 42mm screw mount lenses just as on the Contax. Asahi, BTW, invented the instant-return mirror which has become standard on SLR's.

I'm not surprised that Asahi has hinted that the name "Pentax" was their own idea. Giving credit to your competition isn't often done. I'm sure that no other manufacturer has said they copied the Leica shutter although I'm sure that's exactly what happened with Canon and others making RF cameras.

Walker

[doubs43]

sidneywood said:

Splendid, Walker. And I completely agree with you about the preset diaphragm, and I preferred it in the 1950s too, although the only auto system available then was the one that needed cocking and made a terrible noise, hardly discrete, and enough to frighten any subject away.

I haven't found an adapter yet for Exakta to EOS, so I haven't used any old lenses yet with a DSLR, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced it makes sense to take digital directly rather than go via film and scanning. I should have ditched my Canon film scanner long ago, everyone else seems to have done so before 2000, and I haven't seen them on sale for ages. I've just got a Nikon LS50, and the difference is incredible, but still not quite like digital directly. Your examples, and similar posted by others, are very convincing.

I have an almost complete set of the Pentax semi-auto lenses that require cocking for each exposure. I'm missing the 35mm f/2.3 but have the 35mm f/3.5, 55mm f/1.8, 85mm f/1.8, 105mm f/2.8, 135mm f/3.5 and the 300mm f/4 pre-set lens. The only focal length I'm missing is the 200mm f/5.6 pre-set. These are the lenses availabe to consumers when the Pentax K appeared.

Digital is getting to the point of being as good as film and they also show just how good the older lenses are. I don't believe I've ever heard of an Exakta adapter for the EOS or K-Mount. It would open up a door to a lot of interesting glass.

Walker

[John Farrell]

I've scanned the page of the Praktica LLC manual, mentioned above:

[doubs43]

John, thank you for the scan of your manual page. One of my favorite Prakticas is an LLC in spite of the difficulty of finding a proper battery for it. Your picture illustrates exactly the problem I've encountered with the Biotar on my M42 cameras. I'm just pleased that it works on the DSLR because that's what I bought it for.

Walker

[PeterW]

Walker:
You wrote

I'm sure that no other manufacturer has said they copied the Leica shutter although I'm sure that's exactly what happened with Canon and others making RF cameras.

To take the thread on a different tack from Biotars, the Leica shutter is sometimes called the most copied shutter in camera history. But, possibly stretching things just a little (?), my vote would go to the original Anschütz focal plane roller blind shutter for large format plate cameras. It became a standard and was copied by very many camera makers.

Ottomar Anschütz was a photographer in Prussia, in the eastern part of Germany, who designed the shutter in 1883 and built several cameras with it for his own use before patenting it in 1888. After that it was made by C. P. Goertz. It was the first focal plane shutter to use the principle of two blinds with an adjustable gap between them. Anschütz designed it for action photography and achieved genuine speeds of 1/1000 sec with it, far faster than any other shutter of the time.

It went through numerous modifications and developments, many by a different makers and each one with a different name and the subject of a different patent, so that its ancestry became almost forgotten.

I don't think it would be stretching things too far to say that Oscar Barnack's Leica shutter, originally designed in 1913, was a small format direct descendant of the Anschütz shutter, as indeed is just about every other 35mm focal plane cloth blind shutter.

Probably the most significant development was by Dr. August Nagel (yes, him again) who, in 1928, introduced the single-knob winding-on control with lift, turn and drop speed selection which varied both the crossing speed of the blinds and the gap between them. Before that, the crossing speed and the gap needed separate adjustments, and users often had to consult a chart on the camera to choose the correct combination. He also made the slow speeds controlled by a compact escapement instead of a bulky rotating-weight governor like one in a wind-up gramophone (phonograph) or a steam engine. It made all other focal plane shutter controls obsolete.

Sound like a familiar principle? It lived on, with developments, until the introduction of metal blade focal plane shutters and electronic timing. But it was always, at heart, an Anschütz shutter.

PeterW