Petzval ( a new version of an old classic) adventures

The new Petzval 85mm ( from a 1840 lens design)

This is a very special lens, with its design dating 1840, a design which underwent a major remake by the people at Lomography in Austria and was produced by the Zenith factory KMZ in Krasnogorsk Russia.

Made in brass and sporting a rack and pinion focussing mechanism it features a 4 elements in 3 groups design and had a waterhouse aperture system with inserting aperture slides.

Very old fashioned! The lens exudes character and is most definitely “ sui generis”.


It was the first of a line of photographic lenses characterized by their old fashioned design which took their inspiration from some classic optics of a very far past. To date, this line counts two Petzval Lenses 85mm, 58mm and a Daguerrotype Achromat of 64mm. All these lenses are capable to be used on a full frame format camera and smaller formats such as APS-C and smaller.

I chose to buy the 85mm Petzval lens in the Canon EF version and I have began using it with a Zhongyi Lens Turbo II Focal reducer (keeping it more or less the same focal length on a reduced aps-c sensor) on my Fujifilm X-T1, but later on I went into using a Canon EF adapter with continuous, stop-less, Iris aperture mounted in the adapter behind the lens, between lens and camera, in an  atypical position. This aperture has somewhat aninfluence on contrast and just a little on the depth of field.

The lens has the so typical “ swirl” of the unfocused field behind the subject (these days called “ bokeh")  and it is best used, to that effect, with portraits or other subjects showing head and shoulders and part of the upper body,  or any other subject of more or less 1 meter on the long side against a background that includes backlit foliage or structures which will show the swirly bokeh.

But  even a close up portrait ( generally at the closest possible focussed distance for this lens) has  very nice rendering being very soft and very clement to the skin wrinkles, absorbig most imperfection in the softness of the image produced.

Images

My name is Andrea Milano, Italian born photographer, holding an Italian & Dutch dual nationality.

I am a long term resident  and citizen of the Netherlands where I've lived and worked since 1990.

I began showing an interest in photography early on in life using my father’s camera first and then my own, a Diana Flash, a camera still in production to date, which was given to me by my aunt at the age of 8 years old.

My first approach to a more mature way to be a photographer happened when, following an impulse or a whim, I bought my first reflex camera, a Zenith E, at a street market, where the camera was sold by one of the many Jewish Russian refugees on their way to Israel from Russia.

From then on, photography became a passion, almost an obsession for me. I found that I could put myself behind a camera and achieve an almost ecstatic sense of Zen relaxation as others would achieve by way of meditation.

I was very taken by the chance that photography gave me to express myself and to find that I possessed an artistry which, prior to that, I didn’t suspect I had in me. So I went on practicing photography with joy and intense dedication but as an amateur. All this while I started pursuing photography as an art form and began exhibiting my work in shows and at galleries.

Only many years later, in 1980, I began working, quite by chance, as a free lance photographic assistant in my birthplace: Naples-Italy, and then went on to study photography and graduated in commercial and advertising photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design of Milan in 1984.

After my graduation from photography college, I kept on assisting other photographers, notably Mario Mulas who was my employer, mentor and friend, until 1986, when I started my own studio, Sunset Blvd. Studio, together with Nicola Graziani, a very good friend of mine whom had been the first photographer that I'd worked for and with in his former Neapolitan studio.

Together we had a studio in Milan for several years and worked as commercial photographers.

Once I moved to the Netherlands in 1990, I went into teaching portrait and studio photography at the “ Academie voor fotografie Amsterdam” and later on worked as a photographer for the Dutch Royal library.

My experience as a photographer includes portraits, studio and still life ( commercial or art oriented) photography but I have been known to practice many other types of photography alongside my main professional practice.

I  was always a specialist of large format photography ( with formats  such as 4” x5” and 8” x 10”) but few years ago, I abandoned analog photography for good and dedicated myself solely to digital photography.

 I am a Fujifilm user and, on this modern digital cameras , next to more conventional mainstream autofocus lenses, I use many vintage and adapted lenses some modified by me some simply used with the aid of adapters. The results are often very different from conventional.