[LargeFormat] cult lenses

[philip lambert]

Ross made some decent lenses and I had an Ensign Selfix with a Ross Xpres
that was a Tessar type and worked well. The Epsilon shutter gave no trouble
but they have a mixed reputation and a strange flash plug.
I had a couple of wideangle Dallmeyer halfplate lenses that I mounted on the
front of a Compur. I bought then from an old man who used them to take
industrial monochrome photos on a plate camera. He showed me two that were
very sharp; he used a handheld photoflood which he shone on different parts
of the subject "until I think it's sufficient" !
Aldis made a WW2 naval signalling light.   I guess it's the same Aldis that
made slide projectors later.PL
>
> As for English lenses, Aldis brothers were making a variety of lenses in
on
> Sarehole St, Sparkhill, Birmingham (if anyone knows the area) in the late
> 1930s - early 1940s, according to Kingslake in his chapter in Henney and
> Dudley's "Handbook of Photography". These lenses included aero,
> photomicrography, portrait and wide-angle lenses. Cooke Optics are more
well
> known, of course, http://www.cookeoptics.com/