I have recently come across a rodenstock apo-gerogon s 270mm that seems to have been originally meant for a nuarc photostat camera. The lense has a lense board mounted to it with some type of aperature adjustment mechanism on it. The lense does not appear to have any form of shutter however. My question is this: Could I use it with my Cambo 4x5? If I could, What do I have to do to make this a working lf lense? Who can I contact to get this process rolling? Is it going to be worth the money to convert something like this if it even can be converted? If no one has any suggestions, can you reference me to someone who does?

-- Kevin Netz (kevinnetz@hotmail.com), October 11, 2001

Answers

The Apo-Gerogon has a covering angle of up to 70 degrees, and a 270mm focal length will easily cover 5x4 with bags of room for movements. It's Rodenstock's equivalent of Schneider's G-Claron, a wide coverage process lens.
These barrel mounted lenses can be used without a shutter by just using some sort of lens cover for longish exposures, or with open flash in the studio.
Converting them to a shutter can be expensive, and kind of defeats the object of getting a first class lens at a bargain basement price. See S.K.Grimes website for details of what needs to be done, and roughly how much it'll cost.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.k), October 11, 2001.

Actually as you pointed out you do NOT have an Apo Gerogon. You have the Apo Gerogon S which is different than the Apo Gerogon.

The S is only available in 270mm and covers 75° where the Apo Gerogon was made from 135 to 360mm and covered between 70 and 78°.

The effective focal length of the S was 271.5mm while the 270mm Apo Gerogon was 267.3mm.

Both are designed to be used only at f22 for optimal performance and the S is corrected for flat field originals over 1 1:3 to 3:1 scale.

The Apo Gerogon was corrected for flat field originals over a 1:5 to 5:1 scale.

neither was designed for a shutter or for 3 dimensional work at infinity. Although both will create an acceptable image of a 3 dimensional object the image would not be as good as that produced by a 240 to 300 mm lens designed for that application.

So Pete's answer was not correct .

Let us know if you have additional questions.

-- Bob Salomon (bob@hpmarketingcorp.com), October 11, 2001.

Oh yes, The S is an f11 optic while the Apo Gerogon is an f9 optic.

The S at 1:1 covers 20x24" at f22 while the Apo Gerogon 270 at f22 covers 18 x 22" at 1:1.

Both would cover 45 at infinity.

-- Bob Salomon (bob@hpmarketingcorp.com), October 11, 2001.

I can ofer a little from experience only with the "non" s version. I had one that I used with no movements on 11X14 at f32. I also used it on my 8X10. I never made any enlargements from negs from the lens, only contact prints. I used it on Historical Architectural shots and liked it from the first. The images looked to me like you could easily have made 5-6X enlargements from the sharpness. Ultimately though I replaced it with a Schneider G-Claron because the Schneider will mount easily into a Copal 1 shutter and the Gerogons are nearly impossible to mount in a shutter. Nothing's impossible, but it doesn't make sense with the readily available Schneider at = or better quality. (Sorry Bob) In fairness, I've never had the Schneider up against the 11X14 at f32 and it might not squeak around as the Gerogon did. If the price is right, grab it, and if you find yourself wandering off into othe LARGER formats, you'll never have to worry about what you've got to cover with. On Ebay these rarely fetch over $200. Jim

-- Jim Galli (jimgalli@lnett.com), October 11, 2001.

Thanks to those who have answered. I would like to make my question slightly more specific however. First, will it cost more than the lense is worth to install a shutter? Second, I do not intend to do copy work with it. My intention is to use it for certain cityscapes and landscapes. Can this be done or will the fact that it is designed for copy work make it a fairly poor choice for a telephoto lens?

-- Kevin Netz (kevinnetz@hotmail.com), October 12, 2001.

I have recently had an Apo-Gerogon-S mounted in a Copal 3S shutter by Mr. Grimes. It cost no more than when I have had other lens mounting done, and the original lens cost a bit more than $100. It is a clean and sharp lens. It works on my 11x14 View camera, with some movements, and the bellows limit its use on the 8x10. Since I could not afford the G-Claron WA lens at all (in barrel or in shutter) this lens works very well indeed.

-- R. Klinkenborg (rklinken@iastate.edu), May 07, 2002.