I have been watching the development of this for a long time - and that is not just a cheap photographic joke. The Petzval lens that is currently being produced by the Zenit/Lomo people has been announced for a number of years - this is the first example that has landed in Camera Electronic. As a dedicated studio portrait shooter of historic subjects...how could I resist trying it out...
I shall leave you to sift through the Lomography waffle in their instruction book - it is advertising after all and they are a people famous for their advertising. Madisonski Avenue has seen some compelling posters...
But the whole idea of remaking something as historic as the Petzval design is deserving of credit. I daresay the Zenit designers have probably been sitting down for the last decade wondering where their next tin of tainted herrings is going to come from, but this was a brilliant leap of faith. A leap backwards, perhaps, but a lot of us want to jump with them!
Petzval lenses are simple things. Uncoated in the originals, though Lomo have multicoated this one. No adjustable aperture. Focusing by rack mechanism. Big, heavy brass artillery shell casings of lenses and famous for a swirling effect in the out of focus areas at open aperture. Open aperture on this one is f:2.2 on an 85mm focal length.
Lomo have made the new Petz in Canon and Nikon mount. I don't have a Nikon any more, but I do have a Nikon to Fujifilm X adapter, so it was natural to try it out in the studio with that. The test bed was an X-E2 running in Sepia jpeg and RAW.
There is aperture control of a sort - you put in metal Waterhouse stops half-way along the barrel. Of course as you do, the depth of field gets better, and the background changes. And as there is no way of knowing what will happen, you just toddle along for the ride and see what you get.
For the inveterate fiddlers out there ( and in here, I might add...) this sort of thing is just candy, nuts, and wine. For those with even bigger sensors - the FX cameras - the results may be even better.
And we can assure you that your competitors in the photo trade are not going to have the same opportunities as you do...unless they are shooting on plate cameras with collodion.
Any aspiring Matthew Brady's out there?
