Leitz Focotar-II 100mm at eBay

[ulf]

I saw that there was a Leitz Focotar-II 100mm f/4.5 for sale at eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/285810363319

The price is reasonable for such a good and also rare lens.

I think I paid a bit more for my copies.

 

An enlarger lens much better suited for UV is the Focotar-2 50mm f/4.5

Several other versions of 50mm Focotars are almost as good, but a few types are not that suitable for UV.

If anyone is tempted to get a 50mm Focotar, please check my evaluations here:

https://www.ultravioletphotography.com/content/index.php?/forum/639-uv-lenses-non-helicoidal/

 

The 100mm Focotar-II is a rather rare lens, produced in small batches, totally maybe 2000pcs, if I remember correctly.

 

Adapted with a suitable helicoid it is a very sharp lens for general photography and especially for close-ups.

It is usable for UV to some extent as the shortest wavelength cutoff is rather deep.

However the slope of decaying transmission is unusually gradual starting rather early, close to VIS.

 

There has been a rumor that this lens was excellent for UV, so I have bought and tried two copies of them, with different production dates, as I suspected differences over production-time.

I returned the first one, that I found lacking for UV, but kept the second as it is such a nice lens for VIS.

The second one I got, had a serial number very close to the one copy owned by one of our members, that believed it had a good deep UV-transmission as he got reasonably good images when using the lens.