American Made (New York) Lens - "Periscope" by R.D. Gray

[jdleffler]

I seem to be having trouble with accessing or adding to a post so I'll start

again. I hope this is OK.

 

I have an American made lens and am having an extraordinarily difficult time

finding out more about this American manufacturer and general availability of

the "Periscope" lens. I have heard that R.D. Gray invented the Secret Vest

Camera and that he also invented a Secret Cane Camera among other camera related

inventions. Does anyone know much about these lens (Serial No.s etc.) presumably

manufactured by R.D. Gray in the late 1880 or 1890s? Additionally, were they

found on Gray manufactured cameras or on other large format cameras.

 

Literally all I know is found in an old sales catalog:

 

"The Periscope Lens is a rectilinear combination of the wide-angle variety,

having an angle of 80 degrees, and is suitable for taking interior and exterior

views?a very satisfactory instrument for general open-air work.

The largest apeture, f-14 admits sufficient light for instantaneous views. The

larger sizes are suitable for taking life-size portraits in the studio."

 

 

Thanks for any information, David Leffler

 

Please see below for an example.<div></div>

[jdleffler]

Here is the Manufacturer's Name on the side.<div></div>

[jdleffler]

R.D. Gray lenses were found on other cameras. However I have I have located so little information. Any help would be appreciated. I did find this in:

 

M. Wilkinson and C. Glanfield a lens collector's vade mecum*

 

"Montauk Camera Co. (G. Gennert), 24 East 13 St., New York, USA.

They agented other lenses, including Tessar, Dagor, Heliar early this Century, but did list lenses which seem to be of their own brand.

 

Gray's Extreme Angle Stigmatic for 90-95? f11 4.5, 5.375, 6.5in This seems to be a Portable RR. It was suggested to use 5.375in for 10x8in (at small apertures?).

 

Eoscope f5.0 6-14in Portrait lens, probably a Petzval.

 

Sylvar Series 111 f6.8 5-17.5in It was suggested to use 12in for 10x8in. This was a symmetrical anastigmat, of 3+3 glasses, and possibly a Dagor version.

see also reference to Gennert above."

 

Anastigmat

 

The outer parts of the simple lenses are unsharp partly because vertical lines and horizontal lines are focussed at different distances from the lens. (Correctly they are tangential and sagittal lines.) This was seldom corrected in lenses up to 1890, largely as the limited range of glasses then available made it hard to correct both spherical and astigmatic aberrations in the same lens, and designers and customers wanted a sharp central image to focus on. Actually astigmatism is more serious in degrading an image than spherical

and some designers tried to correct it. Some early attempts may be:

 

Pantoscop by Busch. Probably a very valid claim.

 

Antiplanet by Steinheil. Another valid claim.

 

Piazzi Smyth Petzval with field flattener- an uncertain claim.

 

M. Mittenzwei of Zwickau seems to have tried with the new glasses in c.1887.

 

R.D.Gray of New York also.

 

E. Hartnack and A. Miethe of Berlin (a Pantoscope type design?) which is said to have failed due to the choice of glass.

 

K.Fritsch of Vienna, in an Apochromat.

 

F R. von Voigtlaender of Brunswick but with no details available.(It was probably to be the Kollinear)

 

Commercially viable lenses were developed with the Concentric of Schroeder for Ross, 1888-1892.and Anastigmats of Rudolph and Zeiss (1889-1890) and the Double Anastigmat of von Hoegh and Goerz (1892).

 

See also Steinheil, Beck, Dallmeyer and TTH for innovators.

 

If anyone finds out anything else more substantive please let me know.

 

Sincerely,

David Leffler<div></div>

[jdleffler]

And another catalog<div></div>

[rodeo_joe1]

I'm not sure what further information you hope to get here, David. I think you've already done extremely well to get the amount of information you already have on an obscure lens from an obscure manufacturer.

 

If you want to find the optical construction of the lens, then this can be seen by taking a visible laser (a small red laser pointer is ideal), and "flicking" it rapidly backwards and forwards across the lens. The laser will highlight the surfaces of the lens, even cemented surfaces, and allow you to effectively see an oblique cross-section of the elements.

 

I suspect the lens will be a four meniscus element wideangle anastigmat design, similar to, but more symmetrical than, the later Zeiss Topogon.

 

Remember that the Dagor dates back to 1893, so although the barrel design looks very primitive, optical design was becoming quite sophisticated in the 1890s.

[pvp]

It sounds like you're probably the expert on them, David. Got any photos (taken through it!) to share with us?

[jdleffler]

As a matter of fact I did take a series of pictures by holding the Periscope lens up near my HP850 and shooting various distances. HP doesn't make a camera with a bellows. Their loss. Frankly, the light gathering properties of this lens are amazing. I had to set my exposure compensation all the way down to get a good image. Frankly, hand holding a lens out in front of a digital camera to get a focused picture is not optimal photography. Extraordinarily interesting but its hard to hold my breath and stop my heartbeat long enough to get a razor sharp image. Cool to shoot through a 100 year old lens and get a decent picture, round though it may be. I got a taste of what a photographer may have felt like 100 years ago. Rather thrilling.<div></div>

[colin carron]

As Joe and Alan have said it kooks like you are the expert on this one! Here for completeness is my reply in your previous post identifying it as possibly a Steinheil Periscop derivative :

 

David, I have no specific information but 'Periscop' is a name given to a class of fairly simple early lenses. They were often two pairs of achtomatic doublets so something like a Rapid Rectlinear (1866) . The original Periscop seems to have been a Steinheil design patented in 1865 but the name seems to have become generic for the type.

 

You may be able to get some confirmation of this by shining a light into the lens and counting the main reflections. Doing this on a Rapid Rectilinear gives two main reflections for the two groups. You will need to set the biggest aperture in your waterhouse stops.

 

If you want to find out more about your lens' oprical properties then you can work out the focal length approximately by projecting the image of say a window onto white card and measuring. If the image is bright enough compared to the background you will also be able to see how wide angle the lens is. With a 1880's Ross Rapid Rectilinear I get a focal length of about 8 inches and an image circle of about 7 inches diameter.

 

To get am idea of image quality you could adapt a T mount onto a SLR or make an adaptor to fit a LF camera.

[michael_briggs2]

Rudolf Kingslake has some brief comments on the Periskop lens in his book "A History of the Photographic Lens". Summarizing, this design was patented by C. A. Steinheil 1865 as two single meniscus elements about a central stop. His design had an aperture of f/15. The design has a flat field and the symmetry is good for coma. But the lens is neither achromatic nor corrected for spherical aberration. Kingslake says that the lens has been frequently used on moderate-priced cameras.

 

Colin mentions two achromatic doublets. This would be a modification of the original design.

[jdleffler]

Thank you Colin for moving your comments to this post. I greatly appreciate your commitment to completeness in one post. Lord knows there isn't that much more information out there not represented here. Researchers in the future will thank you.

 

I thoroughly enjoy going back through some of the old archives and gathering information that would otherwise live only in the fuzzy, portable resting place of a professional photographers hat. I love this place.