Spencer Port-Land 9" f/4.5 soft focus PORTRAIT lens. Serial #646. Circa 1911. Made in Buffalo, NY by Spencer lens
company. Two element Aplanat optical design. Lens is in a barrel mount.
Barrel diameter is 60mm. Mounting flange diameter is 80mm. Lens covers up to
5x7" format. Lens aperture is f/4.5. The lens aperture
range is f/4.5 to f/32 with built-in variable lens aperture. This lens has been custom remounted into an Acme #4 shutter by S.K. Grimes. Speeds of 1/100 to 1 sec, B.T. Lens is Ex++ or 9 of 10 cosmetic condition. Black finish on lens. No dents or dings.
Nice finish on the remounted Acme #4 shutter. Few dust spots inside that are only
visible with a flashlight which will NOT effect image quality. Very clean optics.
Non coated lens. No scratches or separation. Great unique Spencer Port-Land
soft focus lens with unique optical quality. Lens comes with original lens barrel & mounting flange. Also included is an Ilex #4 shutter mounted by S.K. Grimes, S.K. Grimes flange, and S.K. Grimes custom rear cap. Nice scarce soft focus portrait lens for your 4x5 or 5x7 view camera.
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In 1911, the Spencer Lens Company
produced the "Port-land" lens. The name was to denote this lens
was useful for both portrait and landscape work. The shorter focal length
models are f/4.5 in speed, while longer focal lengths are f/5.6. The 1915 book, How To Choose and Use a Lens
remarks, "The Spencer Port-Land is a single meniscus lens possessing a
distinctive character of its own. It gives great softness without losing the
drawing, and works nominally at about f/4.5, though few workers can utilize its
image at any stop larger than about f/5.6, on account of its giving a number of
overlapping images. Its softness is different from that of any other
lens."
The March 1921, New Photo-Minature
Magazine writes, "The Port-land Lens, F/4.5 (Spencer Lens Co.), is not
offered as a general utility lens, being designed for portraiture and landscape
work. It is a single achromatic combination of unusual rapidity, with a flat
field, corrected for rectilinearity, and gives a diffused or well-defined image
at will. This diffusion being most largely the result of spherical aberration,
it is controlled by the use of the diaphragm, so that by stopping down the lens
a sharp image is obtained. The degree or quality of the diffusion given at the
largest aperture, however, is not excessive, giving soft lines and masses,
luminous shadows and roundness of delineation without loss of form."
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Super
condition of this unique Spencer Port-Land soft focus lens for your large
format camera mounted in Ilex #4 shutter with mounting flange. Sells with NO RESERVE at price of $1595. I have
more Soft Focus Lenses, Voigtlander, Cooke, Kodak, Rodenstock, Wollensak
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