 | |
| Introduced in | 1933 |
|---|---|
| Author | Robert Richter |
| Construction | 4 elements in 4 groups |
| Aperture | 6.3 |
Metrogon is a high resolution, low-distortion, extra-wide field (90 degree field of view) photographic lens design, popularized by Bausch and Lomb. Variations of this design were used extensively by the US military for aerial photography, fitted to the T-11 and other aerial cameras. [1]
The most common Metrogon lenses have a f number of 6.3 and a focal length of 6 inches. The company name (Bausch and Lomb) and the US Patent number (2031792) are prominently inscribed on the front of the lens barrel. [2] However, this patent is for a family of symmetric wide-angle lenses designed by Robert Richter of Carl Zeiss AG, which was filed in 1934 and sold by Zeiss as the Topogon . [3] For this reason, it is believed the Metrogon lenses marked with this patent are a licensed version of the popular and very similar (if not identical) Topogon design.
An aerial camera fitted with a Metrogon lens deployed by the United States Army Air Corps was featured in a 1941 article in Popular Science , which noted the lens gave the camera a 93° field of view, doubling the area that could be captured in a single photograph. [4] By 1944, the military had charted 3,000,000 sq mi (7,800,000 km2) in a single year using the tri-Metrogon, a triple aerial camera system fitted to the noses of aircraft including the P-38 Lightning and B-25 Mitchell. [5] [6]
In 1943, Bausch and Lomb was granted an independent patent for a similar lens design with 5 elements and the same f/6.3 maximum aperture, showing less distortion than the lens in the Carl Zeiss patent. [7] The Bausch and Lomb patent also compares the distortion of their design favorably to a similar 5 element lens, patented in 1938, which has a slightly wider maximum f-number of f/5.6. [8] It is not certain whether Bausch and Lomb incorporated their own design instead of the Zeiss design when producing Metrogon lenses after 1943.
The introduction of faster lenses with equivalent coverage including the Wild Aviotar and Zeiss Biogon in the 1950s rendered the Metrogon obsolete, [9] : 151 and Metrogon lenses were sold to the public as surplus starting in the early 1960s. [10]
Bausch + Lomb is an eye health products company based in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the world's largest suppliers of contact lenses, lens care products, pharmaceuticals, intraocular lenses, and other eye surgery products. The company was founded in Rochester, New York, in 1853 by optician John Bausch and cabinet maker turned financial backer Henry Lomb. Until its sale in 2013, Bausch + Lomb was one of the oldest continually operating companies in the United States.
A camera lens is an optical lens or assembly of lenses used in conjunction with a camera body and mechanism to make images of objects either on photographic film or on other media capable of storing an image chemically or electronically.
The Cooke triplet is a photographic lens designed and patented in 1893 by Dennis Taylor who was employed as chief engineer by T. Cooke & Sons of York. It was the first lens system that allowed elimination of most of the optical distortion or aberration at the outer edge of the image.
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.
CinemaScope is an anamorphic lens series used, from 1953 to 1967, and less often later, for shooting widescreen films that, crucially, could be screened in theatres using existing equipment, albeit with a lens adapter. Its creation in 1953 by Spyros P. Skouras, the president of 20th Century Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal 2.55:1, almost twice as wide as the previously common Academy format's 1.37:1 ratio. Although the technology behind the CinemaScope lens system was made obsolete by later developments, primarily advanced by Panavision, CinemaScope's anamorphic format has continued to this day. In film-industry jargon, the shortened form, 'Scope, is still widely used by both filmmakers and projectionists, although today it generally refers to any 2.35:1, 2.39:1, 2.40:1, or 2.55:1 presentation or, sometimes, the use of anamorphic lensing or projection in general. Bausch & Lomb won a 1954 Oscar for its development of the CinemaScope lens.
The Tessar is a photographic lens design conceived by the German physicist 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 Zeiss Tessar.
A slide projector is an opto-mechanical device for showing photographic slides.
Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography. The term has also been applied to a photograph that is cropped to a relatively wide aspect ratio, like the familiar letterbox format in wide-screen video.
A fisheye lens is an ultra wide-angle lens that produces strong visual distortion intended to create a wide panoramic or hemispherical image. Fisheye lenses achieve extremely wide angles of view, well beyond any rectilinear lens. Instead of producing images with straight lines of perspective, fisheye lenses use a special mapping, which gives images a characteristic convex non-rectilinear appearance.
Panavision is an American motion picture equipment company founded in 1953 specializing in cameras and lenses, based in Woodland Hills, California. Formed by Robert Gottschalk as a small partnership to create anamorphic projection lenses during the widescreen boom in the 1950s, Panavision expanded its product lines to meet the demands of modern filmmakers. The company introduced its first products in 1954. Originally a provider of CinemaScope accessories, the company's line of anamorphic widescreen lenses soon became the industry leader. In 1972, Panavision helped revolutionize filmmaking with the lightweight Panaflex 35 mm movie camera. The company has introduced other cameras such as the Millennium XL (1999) and the digital video Genesis (2004).
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 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.
Ernst Gundlach (1834–1908) was a German-American inventor specialising in the design of optical instruments.
The Zeiss Hologon is an ultra wide-angle f=15mm f/8 triplet lens, providing a 110° angle of view for 35mm format cameras. The Hologon was originally fitted to a dedicated camera, the Zeiss Ikon Contarex Hologon in the late 1960s; as sales of that camera were poor and the Zeiss Ikon company itself was going bankrupt, an additional 225 lenses were made in Leica M mount and released for sale in 1972 as the only Zeiss-branded lenses for Leica rangefinders until the ZM line was released in 2005. The Hologon name was revived in 1994 for a recomputed f=16mm f/8 lens fitted to the Contax G series of rangefinder cameras.
Friedrich Deckel GmbH, also known as F.Deckel, was a German company founded by Friedrich Deckel and Christian Bruns in Munich as Bruns & Deckel in 1903. Its most famous product is the Compur line of leaf shutters used on many photographic lenses starting from 1911. Bruns and Deckel previously had worked together at C. A. Steinheil & Söhne; Bruns was an inventor responsible for developing leaf shutters while Deckel was a laboratory mechanic.
The lens used in this projector is a 6-in. Metrogon which recently became available through military surplus channels. The Metrogon is used extensively in wide-field aerial photography, and this wide-field capability makes it very popular as a projector lens. [...] You can buy this 6-in. Metrogon in its original aerial-camera mounting for $12.50.