Re: PHOTO-3D digest 1653

[P3D Eric Goldstein <egoldste@xxxxxx>]

Bob Howard writes about the Belplasca:

Your electronic research leads you to many of the same conclusions I
have reached having shot with one now for several months.

The Belplasca is a typical post war east german camera, which means it
is fabricated with inferior materials (though it is an all metal camera,
seemingly mostly aluminum) and it suffers from uninspired design (the
film door latch is an accident waiting to happen!).

There are however three qualities about the camera to recommend it:

1) It is light in weight and fairly easy to maneuver/operate.
2) It is a seven perf camera with full manual controls. Options in this
realm are limited. And...
3) The lenses are post war (that is, recalculated/reconfigured) coated
Zeiss Tessars (I don't think they are the east german Jena Tessars, but
I will check) which are excellent even by modern optical standards. They
are at least visually the equal of or superior to much of the glass RBT
puts on it's cameras (particularly the zoom lens on the Ricoh-based
camera) at far less cost, weight and bulk.

> To me a guillontine shutter is superior to synced leaf shutter.

You speak much more knowledgeably of the two shutter designs than I can,
though I would note that the belplasca shutter seems to achieve measured
speeds closer to a 1/200 than a realist 2.8 can.

> (I can't see where a Belplaca would be better than a f/2.8
> Realist unless you wanted the European format 24x30mm.

In terms of format, we recently beat that puppy to death with all of
that Golden ratio stuff, and I ain't gonna go near it again!  8-)  I
will say that I think the 24 x 30 format has much to recommend it in
many shooting situations...

In terms of glass, I have David White 2.8 and Ektar 2.8 Realists, and
have shot with "Germany" and rare-earth realists. I can tell you that a
there are visual differences in the chromes which are shot with
different tessar type lenses; differences in apparent sharpness/contrast
and color balance. I do not presume to judge which lenses are the
"best," and I don't think resolution tests are much of a proper measure.
But I can tell you that I hands down prefer the performance of the Zeiss
Tessars to the "Germany," rare earth and David White lenses. To me, the
choice is obvious. The Ektars are my choice for 5 perf work.

I think there are also differences between the apparent performance of
various triplet lenses. If you have evidence that there aren't, please
don't tell the folks who paid all that money for those Wollensaks 2.7s,
perhaps the most costly triplets in the history of photography!


Eric G.


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