Zeiss TOPOGON 180mm f5.6 Aerial Lens

I'm curious to hear from anyone who has used or is using the 180MM

Topogon made by Zeiss for aerial cameras. I see little else but

historical references to the large format Topogons. Anyone compare

them directly to the B&L Metrogon or Russian equivalent? Any taking

or printing application would be of interest.

I have a f/5.6 120mm Schneider Aerogon lens in barrel mount. Was taken off an 8x10 viewcamera but I believe it was made to be used on a 9x9 inch aerial camera since it doesn't quite cover the 8x10 format and the "Aero" I believe indicates its Aerial useage. Googled "Aerogon" adn have found nothing. My lens sounds similar to your Topogon. There is a Zeiss Historical Society at http://www.zeisshistorica.org/. The list several articles covering the Topogon at http://www.zeisshistorica.org/articleindex.html

 

Hope you have more luck with the Topogon than I've had with getting info on the Aerogon.

 

Greg

Topogon, Metrogon and W.A.Clarons share the same optical formula. I have not heard from any actual users on the performance of the Topogons.

They are usually collector's items. Rare.

 

Because it is an aerial lens, I would expect it to do very well at infinity. Please do share your experience if you use these.

Topogons were also made to be used as enlarging lenses. One of my neighbors recently bought one of them, saw he couldn't use it as a taking lens, and sold it.

There was a Topogon made for Contax (35mm film, 25mm?) cameras.

Interesting that your friend didn't think it was easier to use as a taking lens than printing lens, unless we are talking about different lenses. Here is a reference photo. Apparently it is equally suited to produce excellent results whether taking or printing.<div></div>

Jess, the little 180 Topogon that sat in my lap was a bit on the large and heavy size for most portable cameras. Also, like the one whose picture you showed it had a built-in red filter. According to Zeiss -- my neighbor asked -- the red filter is part of the optics, can't be removed. And it was in a monstrous shutter like the one you show. No info on how to power or control it.

 

Charlie sold his. For some collectors, having owned is as good as owning.

True, Dan. But mounting it on most enlargers would be quite a task as well, and unless it was a horizontal it would have to be built like the Zeiss enlarger made for it! As well as the permanent filter/shutter mechanism, the glass covering the front and rear elements is about an inch thick with one being coated with an ND graded filter. Quite a piece of work. I believe there are manual filter/shutter bodies on some versions.<div></div>

Well, in fact, he bought the enlarger with the lens, declined to pay to have it shipped from Germany too.

That lens is one of the sharpest aerial lenses around still. A friend of mine have several of them and uses it to take aerial shots and enlarges it with his ZEISS SEG enlarger. Some days ago we looked at a negative with a microscope showing Frankfurt airport from about 3000ft - you could virtually stare into passengers nostrils and I was blown away! He also showed me some tests shots he did with Siemens stars in quite some distance and using the microscope again I could see that the lens had an even better resolution that this high resolution aerial film could resolve. Just amazing. He experimented with several lenses for blowback but always came back to the Topogon, so this is his choice. His measurements showed a resolution of about 125...140 lpm.

 

In case someone wants one, I have one in excellent condition sitting around unused, since I'm mainly into macro.

 

Klaus S.<div></div>

...forgot to mention that this one has a chromium center filter permanently attached but the various apertures can manually be selected with the two buttons and that black knob. This also allows to swing out the red filter.

 

Klaus<div></div>

The German Police some time ago used a special stereo camera equipped with a 60mm Topogon to record crime scenes on high resolution b&w film. The cameras were fixed focus and used screw in achromats to adjust for different distance ranges. I remember having seen negatives with excellent resolution.

 

Klaus

Here the original Zeiss source for the Topogon:

http://www.zeiss.de/C12567A8003B58B9/Contents-Frame/38291731AAB3730EC1256B0A004C7A15

Klaus, Please drop me a line if you get hold of a 60mm Topogon for a reasonable price. Thanks! Vivek.

A nice one on e...y:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=80454&item=7529056714&rd=1

 

KDS

Yep, people with a good sense of humour are also selling on eBay ;-)

Hi Vivek, I am the Joker !

Surveilling the scene, I have to realize, that you are very serious about high resolution

lenses like Topogon, Aviogon, Falconar, S-Planar, S-Orthoplanar,Apo EL NIKKOR, Printing

NIKKOR, Apo Germinar W and all those goodies. Can I help you with that ?

The Topogon 5,6/180mm is really the proud of the Carl Zeiss Photogrammetry Division,

as they told me.

I am working on a solution to control the shutter of the Topogon OFF-SEG 6.