I've been seeing several Nicola Perscheid lenses trading on e-bay for rather high prices, yet I can find no references to them. Someone told me they are soft focus portrait lenses. Who made them? Anyone know anything about them?

-- Arthur Gottschalk (Arthurwg@aol.com), January 04, 2002

Answers

A company by the name of Emil Busch made them. They are not all soft focus portrait lenses. Years ago there were some folks from Japan advertizing tremendous offers for Emil Busch lenses. I doubt if anyone ever received what was offered in the ads. But those ads kinda lent a mystique to these lenses and ever since then they have been looked upon as having more value than they really have. I think the value of them is more that of a collector value than a using value. Kevin

-- Kevin Kolosky (kjkolosky@kjkolosky.com), January 04, 2002.

This is symmetrical 4 elements in 2 group lens (two pairs of glued +/- elements separated with aperture) worse corrected than any Dagor having 6 elements in 2 groups. It has chromatic and spherical aberrations, so gives a soft image with a good bokeh. Good for art portrait work and for collectors.

-- Victor Randin (ved@enran.com.ua), January 11, 2002.

Firstly, I refuse to bear any responsibility or liability whatsoever for the following: it is offered as a advice only and is not guaranteed to be accurate information. Nor do the facts cover any items other than a few examples which have been seen by my informant.

There is at present a large upsurge in offers for sale of this lens.

It has been reported to me by a very knowledgeble dealer/friend that some lenses have been offered over the past year or so in Europe which were clearly fakes.

This has also been the case with other extremely rare classic lenses and the whole field of "rare" variants of the Leica is now a real minefield.

My only advice is to buy such rarities only from really trusted sources: otherwise ensure that you have the items verified to your own satisfaction. It is most probable that one faker is spoiling the market for quite a few genuine vendors.

-- Brian Colin (fzmreels@hotmail.com), January 13, 2002.