Lomography to recreate ancient Petzval camera lens for photographers

An old Petzval lens (left) is compared to the new Lomography Petzval lens (right). (Image: Lomography via Kickstarter)

Vienna, Austria--One of the earliest photographic lenses -- the Petzval lens, invented by Joseph Petzval in 1840 and used into the early 20th century -- is now being resurrected for use with modern cameras. And this is occurring not despite the imaging flaws of the lens, but because of them. Lomography, an organization dedicated to experimental analog photography techniques, has far exceeded its Kickstarter fundraising goal of $100,000 (having reached $611,373 as of July 26, 2013, with a month yet to go), which will allow it to begin manufacturing 19th-century-style Petzval portrait lenses designed to fit modern Nikon F and Canon EF mount film and digital single-lens-reflex (SLR) cameras. Though an achievement for its time, the Petzval lens has characteristics that modern photographers would normally deplore, including strong field curvature, other field-dependent aberrations, and vignetting. But the combined effect of these flaws is actually pleasing in a way, especially for portraits -- in particular, the "bokeh," or out-of-focus blur, is swirly and dreamlike. For this reason, authentic old Petzval lenses are found on eBay at prices that run into the thousands of dollars.Old-time look, but faster lens The Petzval lens design consists of two achromatic doublets with the stop between them; the rear achromat has an air space to help reduce aberrations. Lomography says its own take on the Petzval lens will be designed and fabricated at Zenit Camera (Krasnogorsk, Russia). The lens will have an f-number of f/2.2 -- which is a departure from the old design, which had f-numbers ranging to about f/3.5. The new lens will also have a brass barrel and an old-timey look.

This image was taken with an old Petzval lens on a Canon 5D digital SLR. (Image: Lomography via Kickstarter)
Lomography's Kickstarter page states: "Zenit are master lens manufacturers and have the skill to build the Petzval lens for use with today’s SLR cameras. There are very few companies worldwide who still have enough knowledge of optics to complete a project such as this." Hmm . . . This Laser Focus World editor's opinion is that, while the first sentence in that quote is surely true, the second may have overreached: there are many highly-skilled optics outfits well-known to readers of Laser Focus World that no doubt have the optics knowledge to finish this project without overly burdening their engineers. See http://www.lomography.com/ and http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lomography/the-lomography-petzval-portrait-lens