One of the advantages of doing historic Victorian photography is there are so many great lenses around to choose from. I can choose a vintage or modern lens for wet plate photographs. By “vintage” I mean something 100 years old or older – a lens that could have been used for wet plate photography when it was new. “Modern” means something from the early to mid 1900’s (so only 50 to around 100 years old).

The choice of a vintage or modern lens for wet plate is for me more of an artistic choice than a technical one. Although there are technical differences. The biggest difference is Vintage lenses are more simple in design and that usually means a photo with more character. My main vintage lens is a Petzval design and it has a lot of character – a small area in focus, distortion near the edges, and a lot of beautiful swirl in the background.

Here is a recent plate of my Paddington Bear family with an 1890’s (I think) vintage Petzval lens.

The image is just loaded with character and has that classic tintype look and feel. Of course, if this was a group portrait the people on the edges would not be very happy with how they look in the photo! Here is a portrait using the same lens (actually one of my first ever wet plates). The swirl of the Petzval gives the portrait an amazing look while her face is in focus and beautifully rendered.

Here is another photo of my Padding Bear family but using a 75 year old “modern” lens (a Fuji lens). Much more in focus across the frame than the Petzval and less distortion. It also has a very little swirl or character in the background areas.

So which is better – the vintage lens or the modern lens? The answer is neither! It is all about the look and feel; it is an artistic choice! Which is better from the photographer’s perspective? From a utility standpoint the modern lens is easier to focus and more forgiving than the Petzval so it is easier to use. But I do love the look of the Petzval!

But what about new lenses – ones made now days? Yes, large format lenses are still made and they make beautiful images – but not for collodion wet plate. The problem is that newer lenses have coatings on the glass designed to enhance the image. The coatings block UV light and minimize flare and fog. Great for film, but collodion relies on UV light for a lot of the image generation. No UV no image! So modern lenses are not suitable for wet plate collodion…

Before you go, a word on the Petzval lens. Joseph Petzval developed his revolutionary lens in 1840 and it revolutionized photography. The Petzval lens generated beautiful images and had amazing light gathering ability. This made it possible to make a photograph in only seconds instead of minutes. Petzval was an amazing inventor, mathematician and physicist who did groundbreaking work in optics. Unfortunately his life story is rather sad, you can read more on Wikipedia

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