[LargeFormat] cult lenses

[Michael Briggs]

On 02-Jun-2003 Dan Kalish wrote:
> What are Dagor, Cooke, Dallmeyer, Goerz, Dallmeyer, and Wollensak lenses and
> why are they held in such reverence?  I was checking out Dagor77's auctions.
> What a character!

Some of this is from Dagor77's skill with words and selling.

Some of this is from lore on the Internet being misunderstood.  Various experts
on the internet have correctly recommended certain older lenses are being of
high-quality at a low price -- soon the demand exceeds the supply, the price of
the classic soars, and one can buy a newer lens of higher quality for a lower
price, so that the former bargain classic no longer makes sense as a user lens.
Sometimes readers of the praise of these older lenses misinterpert the praise
to mean that the lenses are better than recent offerings.   Sometimes the
rarity of these older lenses in excellent condition drives up the price by
collector/users or just plain collectors.

The cases where these classics can still make sense even at elevated prices are
for ultra-large formats and sometimes 8x10.   Lenses made in recent decades for
all purposes for 4x5 are highly available on the used market.   For 4x5
the newer lenses are generally better (sometimes by a small margin or by being
in a better shutter), especially for wide angles.  In recent decades the market
for lenses for 11x14 and larger formats has been too small to justify (in a
business sense) the production of certain types of lenses, so there are gaps in
what has been manufactured.

--Michael