"Color Skopar" means, what, exactly (in a Perkeo) ?

Picked up a camera cheap at a charity auction. Has a surprisingly

good lens, an 80mm f3.5 Color Skopar. I had great lenses on an

older Rolleiflex SL35M, and some were Skopars. Since those lenses

were modern, and the lens on this folding Voigtlander 120 Perkeo II

isn't, what does Skopar designate? Is it like "Ektar", a model line

of sorts? I assume this lens is a coated Tessar, but of course,

might be wrong. The images seem too good at varying apertures for

this for this to be a 3-element lens. Great little folding camera.

Super small for an old 120 camera, with a coated lens of some sort

(what sort?). Any feedback appreciated. I found some websites

mentioning this cam, but none that I saw told what the lens really

was, or if it was used on other similar cameras.

I'm pretty sure the skopar was a voigtlander copy (maybe a variant) of the zeiss tessar design.

 

...Wayne

...of course Cosina have now hijacked the skopar name and used that for a number of different "voigtlander" lenses which are not derivitives of the tessar design.

 

...Wayne

Good snag, Carl. Don't take this personally, but I hate you.

 

Skopar was Voigtlaender's name for their four elements in three groups Tessar clone. When coating came into general use after WWII, Voightlaender marketing insisted that a coated lens was necessary for shooting color -- the old uncoated ones just wouldn't do, time to buy a new camera -- and called their new-fangled coated lenses Color whatever. Color Skopar, in your case. Its still a tessar close.

 

There IS one old Voigtlaender lens sort of named Skopar, the Apo Skopar, that is in fact a five elements in three groups Heliar type. AFAIK, that's the only exception to the rule old Skopar = Tessar.

 

The Skopar, coated or not, was the second line lens on Perkeos and Bessa 66s. The most best was, yes, the Heliar. On 6x9 Bessas, the top of the line, post-WWII, was a Heliar with rare-earth glasses, the Apo Lanthar. AFAIK, and I could be wrong, Perkeos weren't offered with Apo Lanthars.

In later Vitos, the Lanthar was a cheaper alternative to the Skopar. I thought it was a 3-element lens. Yet other "APO Lanthars" seem to be quite exotic. So the next question I have is what, if anything, does "lanthar" designate?

The lanthanums are a group of rare-earth elements sometimes added to optical glass to improve certain properties (not sure what properties). I'm pretty sure the lanthar uses that type of glass. Perhaps Voigtlander were able to achieve the same performance from this design while reducing the number of elements ?

 

...Wayne

by the way, anyone know where the name Perkeo comes from ?

 

...Wayne

Wayne, about the Apo Lanthar, read what I wrote. The plain Lanthar was a triplet, the Apo Lanthar is a heliar type.

 

Perkeo? A Voigtlaender trade name. To learn more, take the Heidelburg castle tour. Nickname of a dwarf jester imported from Italy who asked "why?" a lot and came to a bad end. Perkeo is a phonetic spelling of the question.

by the way, anyone know where the name Perkeo comes from ?

 

From what I read Perkeo means Pigmy in German, since the

camera is quite small, hence the name.

Wayne wrote: "The lanthanums are a group of rare-earth elements sometimes added to optical glass to improve certain properties (not sure what properties). I'm pretty sure the lanthar uses that type of glass. Perhaps Voigtlander were able to achieve the same performance from this design while reducing the number of elements ?"

 

I think you're right. Agfa did that for their Apotar, a triplet like the Agnar, but with better glass.

The first Lanthanum glass was invented by Kodak in about 1930 (or possibly a year earlier for their 5 element 101mm f3.5 Medalist cameras).

 

Lanthanum glass gave a higher refractive index and was a barrier to Ultra Violet radiations, both of these permitted better lenses.

 

Lynn

Lynn, are you sure for that 1930 date for EKCo's first use of rare earth glasses and for the first production of the 105/3.5 Ektar and the Medalist? I think your dates are about 10 years early.