In the previous article, I pondered and mused, among other things, about how only a few of my portrait lenses can currently challenge the Hermagis Portrait and the Fast Worker in the ring without immediately throwing in the towel. On paper, the Dallmeyer 3B seemed like an evenly matched opponent - so how did it turn out? Did the Dallmeyer Series B confirm its legendary status and join the ranks of Hermagis and Hugo Meyer? Or were the tales exaggerated and instead of a triad of equals, only two champions continue to jostle on the pedestal? Whoa not so fast! Let's take a scenic detour. Through London and small Czech town called Kostelec nad Černými lesy. 

As the lead paragraph already hinted (not that it dropped from the sky - I had to roll up my sleeves and dive headfirst into the dusty annals of the Dallmeyer factory), this lens left the warmth of the assembly bench in May 1883 and was immediately snatched up by a certain Mr. Alman - assuming I'm decoding that damn handwriting correctly. And then? Vanished. Spent the next century and a half who-knows-where, doing who-knows-what.

• If you're willing to poke around their web archive, you can actually dig out a surprising amount of info about the who, what, when, where, and how. Sure, the lists are far from complete and the site sometimes runs like it had a stroke, but let's be grateful it exists at all. That's not always the case. And I don't just mean someone bothered to compile the archives - first they had to bloody survive. Through wars, floods, and generations of people not giving a fuck. And to even have a shot at surviving, someone had to make them in the first place. And no, it doesn't apply to everyone  - and yes, I'm looking at you, Swiss Suter.

Now, allow me my blissfully naive fantasy: that for all those decades, this brass beauty was out there relentlessly immortalizing corseted maidens and top-hatted gentlemen. Think of the faces it saw, the stories it witnessed, the places it traveled - if only this golden tube could talk. But let's be honest: it probably spent the last God-knows-how-many years collecting dust in a banana box down in some musty basement, nestled between a dead rat and last decade's Christmas decorations. And then one day, during spring cleaning, someone thought, "Hey, maybe I can flog this." Still - I prefer the corsets and cylinder hats version. Don't ruin it for me.

So where did the B Series come from?

London, of course. Before starting his own business, John Henry Dallmeyer worked under Andrew Ross (and, as a bonus, married off his daughter). Ross was one of the early trailblazers in lens-making, crafting optics as early as 1840. Meaning he was there while the View from the Window at Le Gras was still drying.

And the design of Dallmeyer's B Series is heavily inspired by A. Ross's original portrait line. What you learn from your master, you eventually use to build your own empire. Or, you know, copy with flair.

There were countless variations, in-between models and Frankenstein hybrids, but let's stick to the two most important iterations. That said, regardless of version, this thing is rare as hen's teeth. Even though quite a few were made, it's still a unicorn. If you've got one - keep an eye on that.

• The earliest versions were from brass, equipped with a rack & pinion focusing mechanism and good old Waterhouse stops (occasionally and very rarely also with iris diaphragm). The soft-focus mechanism was tucked away in the rear and you adjusted it by rotating the rear element. There were notches and an indicator, and the more you unscrewed, the dreamier and more melted the image became. You could go up to about five full rotations. Downside? You had to remove the lens from the camera to adjust it.
• The second version ditched the rack movement and made SF adjustment way less awkward - it moved the control up front. No more brassy juggling. Still golden, still dishy, but now with a standard aperture made of blades controlled by a lever.