The Angénieux retrofocus photographic lens is a wide-angle lens design that uses an inverted telephoto configuration. The popularity of this lens design made the name retrofocus synonymous with this type of lens. The Angénieux retrofocus for still cameras was introduced in France in 1950 by Pierre Angénieux.
The Tessar is a photographic lens design conceived by the German physicist Dr. Paul Rudolph in 1902 while he worked at the Zeiss optical company and patented by Zeiss in Germany; the lens type is usually known as the ZeissTessar. Since its introduction, millions of Tessar and Tessar-derived lenses have been manufactured by Zeiss and other manufacturers, and are still produced as excellent intermediate aperture lenses.
Voigtländer was a significant long-established company within the optics and photographic industry, headquartered in Braunschweig, Germany, and today continues as a trademark for a range of photographic products.
A catadioptric optical system is one where refraction and reflection are combined in an optical system, usually via lenses (dioptrics) and curved mirrors (catoptrics). Catadioptric combinations are used in focusing systems such as searchlights, headlamps, early lighthouse focusing systems, optical telescopes, microscopes, and telephoto lenses. Other optical systems that use lenses and mirrors are also referred to as "catadioptric", such as surveillance catadioptric sensors.
Large format lenses are photographic optics that provide an image circle large enough to cover the large format film or plates used in large format cameras.
The double Gauss lens is a compound lens used mostly in camera lenses that reduces optical aberrations over a large focal plane.
The Zeiss Sonnar is a photographic lens originally designed by Dr. Ludwig Bertele in 1929 and patented by Zeiss Ikon. It was notable for its relatively light weight, simple design and fast aperture.
The Petzval objective or Petzval lens is the first photographic portrait objective lens in the history of photography. It was developed by the Hungarian mathematics professor Joseph Petzval in 1840 in Vienna, with technical advice provided by Peter Wilhelm Friedrich von Voigtländer. The Voigtländer company went on to build the first Petzval lens in 1840 on behalf of Petzval, whereupon it became known throughout Europe. Later, the optical instruments maker Carl Dietzler in Vienna also produced the Petzval lens.
A dialyte lens is a compound lens design that corrects optical aberrations where the lens elements are widely air-spaced. The design is used to save on the amount of glass used for specific elements or where elements can not be cemented because they have dissimilar curvatures. The word dialyte means "parted", "loose" or "separated".
An anastigmat or anastigmatic lens is a photographic lens completely corrected for the three main optical aberrations: spherical aberration, coma, and astigmatism. Early lenses often included the word Anastigmat in their name to advertise this new feature.
The Gauss lens is a compound achromatic lens that uses two uncemented elements; in its most basic form, a positive meniscus lens on the object side and a negative meniscus lens on the image side. It was first proposed in 1817 by the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss for a refracting telescope design, but was seldom implemented and is better known as the basis for the Double-Gauss lens first proposed in 1888 by Alvan Graham Clark, which is a four-element, four-group compound lens that uses a symmetric pair of Gauss lenses.
The Plasmat lens is a widely used and long-established lens type invented by Paul Rudolph in 1918, especially common in large-format photography. It provides high correction of aberrations with a moderate maximum aperture. It is a specific instance of the Dagor type double-meniscus anastigmat. Double-meniscus anastigmats use widely separated positive and negative surfaces, generally thick meniscus lenses, to achieve a flat field. The most basic form is two sharply curved meniscus elements located symmetrically about a stop. Further refinement of the form replaces the two simple meniscus lenses with achromats for chromatic correction. The Dagor type further refines these achromats into triplets with the following design parameters: a high-index, doubly convex (DCX) lens cemented to a medium-index, doubly concave (DCV) lens cemented to a low-index meniscus lens. Up to this point, all refinements have maintained symmetry about the stop. The Plasmat further refines the Dagor form by uncementing the meniscus, allowing for placement away from the first two elements and removing the criterion of symmetry.
The design of photographic lenses for use in still or cine cameras is intended to produce a lens that yields the most acceptable rendition of the subject being photographed within a range of constraints that include cost, weight and materials. For many other optical devices such as telescopes, microscopes and theodolites where the visual image is observed but often not recorded the design can often be significantly simpler than is the case in a camera where every image is captured on film or image sensor and can be subject to detailed scrutiny at a later stage. Photographic lenses also include those used in enlargers and projectors.
Biogon is the brand name of Carl Zeiss for a series of photographic camera lenses, first introduced in 1934. Biogons are typically wide-angle lenses.
Ludwig Jakob Bertele was a German optics constructor. His developments received universal recognition and serve as a basis for considerable part of the optical designs used today.
Topogon is a wide field, symmetrical photographic lens patented by Robert Richter in 1933 for Carl Zeiss AG. As there are four meniscus elements in four groups, deployed symmetrically around the central aperture, it is considered a double Gauss lens variant.
The invention of the camera in the early 19th century led to an array of lens designs intended for photography. The problems of photographic lens design, creating a lens for a task that would cover a large, flat image plane, were well known even before the invention of photography due to the development of lenses to work with the focal plane of the camera obscura.
Bessa is the best-known line of folding viewfinder and rangefinder cameras manufactured by Voigtländer, which was a dual-format camera that took 6×9 and 4.5×6 pictures on medium format rollfilm. The Bessa was introduced in 1929 and an improved version incorporating a coupled rangefinder was introduced as the Bessa Rangefinder in 1935; the line was supplemented by the single-format Baby Bessa, which took 4.5×6 and 6×6 pictures, respectively. Production was interrupted by World War II; after the war, the Bessa resumed limited production, but was succeeded by the Bessa I and Bessa II, the latter including a rangefinder. Similar rollfilm cameras manufactured contemporaneously by Voigtländer included the Petito (1924), Rollfilm (1925), Inos (1931), Jubilar (1931), Prominent (1932), and Perkeo.
Prominent refers to two distinct lines of rangefinder cameras made by Voigtländer.
