• Tessar (from Greek τέσσερα, téssera = four) also has four elements, but the last two are cemented into a doublet. You don't need a PhD to see the family resemblance: one evolved from the other. Tessar simply turned out to be the more gifted child and Zeiss loved it more. Unar lost. Tessar became one of the cornerstones of photographic optics.

• And by the way, all those companies are still alive and kicking. Bausch & Lomb now makes contact lenses (still lenses! Just for eyes). Taylor Hobson makes metrology instruments, Cooke Optics spun off and builds high-end lenses (their shared history is a soap opera for another time - they're still flirting with soft-focus, see the Cooke PS645), and Zeiss is still busy sticking its fingers into everything.

You can't really access most of it properly, and unless you know exactly what you're doing, you might as well get comfy because it's going to be a long night. The number of possible assembly combinations is similar to Rubik's Cube and only one of them actually works. I found that out the hard way. After hours of intense cursing I managed to put it back together and even had a screw left over. I decided it was a factory-installed self-destruct feature.

• To be fair, Bausch & Lomb were experts at this not just with the Unar. Their Petzvals and other models from the same period suffered from similar issues, though less dramatically. If you ever find one with an intact aperture, there are only two explanations: you just won the lottery and you'd better not even look at that diaphragm the wrong way, or It's a modern restoration. Which was expensive. Extra expensive². So don't mess with it either.

To give credit where it's due, everything else about the lens is top-notch. This was B&L's showpiece, meant to go head-to-head with TTH, and it shows. The build quality is superb and both the aperture and soft-focus selectors move with a crisp little whoosh that's weirdly satisfying - like the signature "puff" of air you get on a Knuckler when you twist it. The aperture ring sits closer to the flange, while the diffuser scale, marked 1–4, is placed before the diaphragm. One is the sharpest setting, four is the dreamiest mess.

• And here's a fun detail for the 0.0042‰ of humanity who might care: the lens screws right onto a Hermagis Eidoscope No.1 flange. So if you're missing a flange and, by some cosmic coincidence, you've got a No.1 Eido lying around, congratulations! Jackpot!

The most striking foreign feature, though, is the set of control rods. Both selectors have unmistakable sliders with holes on each side. They were meant for attaching strings, so the photographer could adjust settings from behind the camera without stepping away from the ground glass. Genius in theory, but considering the aforementioned friction, you'd need Arnold Schwarzenegger to actually pull it off. Still, it looks amazing on the diagrams.

• The only other lenses with the same slider system were the Portrait Series A f4, B&L's Petzvals, and the high-speed Series B f2.2. As far as I know, that's it. You won't find this oddball setup anywhere else.

• The Portrait Unar series came in four sizes: 10", 12", 14¾", and 18", all at f4.5. The biggest one shows up only sporadically in official catalogues. Apart from the version discussed here, there was also a later redesign that ditched the perforated sliders and moved toward the more modern visual language of lenses like the Plastigmat with double-hatched control rings.

As for the actual image rendering, Portrait Unar behaves pretty much like other anastigmats of its league. At the lowest soft-focus setting and wide open, the lens gives you pleasantly sharp, portrait-friendly images with just the right amount of contrast. Stop down even a homeopathic amount and sharpness skyrockets. Thanks to its flat-field design, it renders groups beautifully too.

• Quick recap: flat-field lenses bend perspective less, so the image stays sharp and well-defined across the entire frame. This makes them excellent for group portraits and essential for technical work.

• Curved-field lenses, on the other hand, tend to prioritize the center, with sharpness dropping off dramatically toward the edges. Petzvals and old meniscus optics behave like this. It's perfect for characterful portraits or artistic shots where accurate reproduction of reality isn't exactly a priority.

If you want to crank up the soft-focus effect, you'd better have a trained eye. The diffusion is on the subtle, elegant side. Even at the max setting, don't expect some mushy glow. And that's not a flaw. For this class of lens, that kind of restrained, delicate diffusion is exactly what you want - it smooths out skin and softens wrinkles without turning people into blurry marshmallows.

But don't throw your Unar in the bin just yet, my squishy pictorialist enthusiasts. Here's a little underground trick. If you unscrew the rear cell and use it on its own, you get a surprisingly hardcore soft lens with a rendering reminiscent of a Kodak Portrait. Adapting it isn't exactly a walk in the park, since the flange thread sits inconveniently close to the rear group, but with a bit of DIY skill (of which, tragically, I have next to none) you can elevate the Unar to a whole new level. Sure, you'll lose the diaphragm, soft-focus slider and lens hood, but you'll end up with something like an Oscar Zwierzina Plasticca or a Kronar/Kronarette. Basically, you'll start painting.

As you can see, the Unar is a gloriously non-boring piece of glass, blending the familiar with the unexpected, the earthy with the dreamlike. So next time someone hits you with the usual barrage of questions - "Are you shooting portraits? Landscapes? Nudes? Will it be sharp, natural, soft, pictorialist? Stopped down a lot, a little, somewhere in between?" - your answer is simple: YES.