Petzval constructions, soft-focus, pictorialist... Whatever you wish for. Novelties from the mid-20th century, but also from the depths of the previous one. Back then, glass was more glassy and brass was more brassy. It wasn't the size and weight that mattered, but the character and bokeh... There's plenty of that here. Leave the pixel magnifiers at home and prepare for absolute perfect imperfection. These lenses don't take images, they draws them.

We learned what are those pictorialisms in my previous article here. However, among all the confusion about knee menisci, the fact that I like it soft and where one can use vaseline, one would miss the most essential information - what is the initial impulse, who is the cornerstone around which the temple of my photographic ingenuity has been...

Who would have expected that with such a lesser speedy lens with a more modern look, right? Well, still waters run deep, don't judge a book by its cover and have your cup half empty or completely empty like me, or as those Nepali monks who bend spoons at will say. Well, enough of the wisdom - the advantage is...

Aldis may not have been the largest, best-known or longest-running factory, but it had a surprising number of successes in a variety of industries. And since I'm in an extra-dry factual mood today, you'll find some fascinating and shocking data below!

Once upon a time, beyond nine mountains, nine rivers and one English Channel, there was once a Dallmeyer company - I recommend paying particular attention to the position of the letters in the name, it will come in handy in a few moments.

Today we're going to talk about brass and aluminium. This lens is made of brass and aluminium. We've done our education on the materials side of things, and now we're going to please the linguists - it's a Hugo Meyer Atelier Schnellarbeiter 310mm f3, which the translator peculiarly translates as "fast worker."

There were many lenses for aerial photography. A lot of them. Some companies switched to their production in times of need from other, related fields, for example from the production of binoculars (the case of British Aldis). They were also produced under license - often they weren't even signed and could only be recognized by serial number or...

Just as there was times when radioactive substances were put into everything from medicines, foods and drinks (Marie-Curie gives it a thumbs down), so too did the manufacturers of optics (but here it had a positive effect, Jiří Zouhar gives it a thumbs up).

We can start with perhaps nothing else than one of the most famous lenses in history - the Heliar from the German company Voigtländer, first created in 1900, here in one of its many iterations in 360mm focal length and f4.5 aperture.