A Legendary 19th Century Lens.

Reinvented For Use With All Nikon F & Canon EF Mount Analog & Digital SLR Cameras.

Shot with an old Petzval lens from the 19th century on a Canon 5D In the 19th Century, the vast majority of photos were shot with the extremely popular Petzval lens. The lens was invented by Joseph Petzval in Vienna in 1840 and had a huge impact on the development of photography. Photos shot with a Petzval lens are immediately recognizable for their sharpness and crispness, strong color saturation, wonderful swirly bokeh effect, artful vignettes and narrow depth of field. The totally distinctive look of Petzval photos is all about the fantastic lens design that gives you the satisfaction of the instant optic experience that goes far beyond using photo editing software and filters.

For this Kickstarter project, we are reinventing the Petzval Lens for 21st century photographers and videographers. It doesnt matter whether you shoot analog or digital; the brand new Lomography Petzval Portrait Lens is designed to work with Canon EF and Nikon F mount cameras. So, for the first time, you can easily get the fantastic Petzval photographic look with 35mm analog cameras and DSLR cameras too. This will bring with it a whole new world of possibilities; from shooting Petzval photos with your 35mm SLR or DSLR, to creating amazing DSLR movies with the lens! The Petzval Portrait Lens is a high-quality glass optic; it's a must-have lens for anyone looking to enhance their creative potential and turn every photo into a timeless artwork. Expected delivery date of the lenses is on February 2014. However, we are confident to have the first 1000 lenses shipped out by December 2013. The retail launch price of the lens is currently planned as $499/499 and the Special Edition at $599/599, so you can make some great savings by backing us on Kickstarter! When the lenses are ready, you'll be able to pick whether you want a Canon or Nikon compatible Petzval lens. Each lens looks absolutely fantastic attached to DSLR cameras and analog cameras!

Shot with an old Petzval lens from the 19th century on a Canon 5D Please note: The Petzval shots shown here are either from an old Petzval lens or the first working prototype, which is of extremely high quality. However, we are still working on a few minor details, especially perfecting the Bokeh effect that makes this lens so special. The lens as well as its accompanying lens hood will also undergo small design changes. Rest assured that you can expect an extraordinary lens upon completion of the project!

The Re-revolution of Portrait Photography

The Lomography Petzval Lens attached to analogue Canon and Nikon SLRs

The Lomography Petzval Lens attached to Digital Canon and Nikon SLRs Why are we bringing back the Petzval two centuries after it was created? Well, were not just looking to re-build the lenses; we have re-designed and re-engineered the optics to work with a whole new generation of cameras!

The original Petzval lens was a truly revolutionary invention. The speed and performance of Petzval's design was especially well suited for portrait shooting and helped give birth to commercial photography as we know it. And just as Joseph Petzval turned the world of photography on its head in 1840 when he first invented the lens, the brand new Lomography Petzval Portrait lens promises to do the same in the 21st Century by giving you truly incredible effects on a whole range of modern SLR cameras. The new Lomography Petzval lens has great color saturation and high contrast. The resolution of the focused area of each photo is extremely high. Thanks to the new and improved Petzval optical design, the Lomography Lens has a large f/2.2 maximum aperture; it's very hard to find older Petzval lenses which have an aperture larger than f/3.5. Because of the large aperture of the new lens, you'll get photos with a very narrow depth of field, and when shooting with the aperture wide open, you'll get a beautiful vignetting effect in your shots.It's the ideal portrait lens!

An old Petzval lens (shown on the left) and the new Lomography Petzval Lens (shown on the right)

A Mind-blowing Lens Effect

Most modern lenses are designed to minimize field curvature, so youll have the whole image in focus. But the Petzval lens design gives its photos a totally different optical effect. Youll get an area which is very sharp at the focus of the photograph over a narrow field. There is then progressive vignetting towards the non-focused areas; this helps draw the viewers attention to the crisp and focused area of the photograph.

A Diagram Showing The Petzval Design. When The Object Center Is In Focus, The Object Edge Appears Out Of Focus

A Diagram Showing A Regular Lens Design. Both The Object Center & Object Edge Appear In Focus It's because of the early large aperture optic design of Petzval that photos taken with the lens will have this beautiful, swirly bokeh effect in the background. The best way to get a sense of this effect is to check out some photos taken with the first working prototype of our New Petzval Lens and an old Petzval lens from the 19th century! These quirky, creative and unique effects from the lens have endeared it to a whole new generation of photographers. Using the Petzval lens is totally different to just adding a filter to your shots in post-production; its about achieving a real optical effect caused by the lens attached to your camera.

An Engineering Breakthrough
The new Petzval Lenses is designed and constructed by a team of optics specialists at the Zenit factory in Russia, together with Lomography. Zenit are master lens manufacturers and have the skill to build the Petzval lens for use with todays SLR cameras. There are

very few companies worldwide who still have enough knowledge of optics to complete a project such as this.

A Technical Drawing of the Lomography Petzval Lens Reinventing the Petzval is no easy task and we have had to start from scratch to bring this project to life. The teams at Zenit and Lomography have worked together to re-draw, recalculate and re-measure the original 1840 Petzval lens to make it work with a whole host of modern cameras, whilst retaining the characteristic effects that made the original Petzval famous. We have sourced new production materials, created a faster lens than the original Petzval and one which has smoother focusing too. The new Lomography Petzval lens will be built from brass (just like the original Petzval lens) and features premium Russian-made glass optics.

Shot with the first working prototype of our New Petzval Lens on a Canon EOS 500 See Hi-Res

The Story of The Original Petzval Lens

When the original Daguerre & Giroux Camera was introduced in 1839, it used a lens designed by Charles Chevalier. This camera marked the very beginning of modern analog photography and was of fundamental importance. But Chevaliers lens had several problems. It had a slow, small aperture of f/15; this meant that even in bright sunlight, exposures could take 10 minutes or more. Joseph Petzval was a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Vienna and worked on a rival lens design which was introduced in 1840 (by the way, as well as being the place where Petzval lived, Vienna is the home of Lomography!). At f/3.6, Petzvals large aperture design was about 20 times faster than the Chevalier lens and produced photographs which were extremely sharp at the focused area. Obviously, the original Petzval lens was designed in order to work with the cameras manufactured in the 19th century. Most of these cameras were large-format analog cameras. Its extremely hard to find a Petzval lens today which works easily with smaller format cameras. The new Lomography Petzval Portrait lens changes all this and allows you to enjoy the magic of the Petzval lens optic using your analog or digital SLR camera.

In photo: Sinar P2 4x5 with a Voigtlander & Sohn Petzval Lens

Shooting with an old Petzval lens setup

The Petzval Lens with Josef Petzval's grave in Vienna

A Portrait of Joseph Petzval

Petzval In Motion
One of the most exciting features of the new Petzval Portrait Lens is that, for the first time ever, its possible to easily shoot DSLR movies with the Petzval optic effect. Achieving the beautiful and distinctive results the lens gives is very, very hard to achieve in postproduction; with the new Petzval lens, it becomes as easy as attaching a new lens to your DSLR!

The Waterhouse Aperture System

The new Lomography Petzval Lens works using a traditional Waterhouse aperture system. With this design, your lens comes with a set of stops (also known as diaphragms). Each diaphragm is drilled with a hole of a different size; these sizes correspond to the f-stop or aperture. So if youd like to shoot with f/4 aperture, you select the f/4 diaphragm and insert it into the aperture slot of your lens; if youd like to shoot with a f/11 aperture, you select the f/11 diaphragm and so on. Here are the aperture options for the Lomography Petzval lens:

f/2.2 f/4 f/5.6 f/8 f/11 f/16

The Waterhouse Aperture System

Lens Technical Specifications

Focal Length: 85mm Maximum Aperture: f/2.2 Apertures: Waterhouse aperture set, up to f/16 Image Circle: 44mm Field of View: 30 degrees Lens Mounting Profile: Canon EF and Nikon F Electronic contacts: No Closest Focusing Distance: 1m Focusing Mechanism: Gear Rack Focusing Lens Construction: 4 Elements in 3 Groups Filter Thread: 67mm Max. Diameter x Length, Weight: 120mm x 85mm x 80mm (Please note: This is an estimate based on the first working sample) Weight: 500g (Please note: This is an estimate based on the first working sample)

This MTF Chart shows the Petzval lens performance under specific resolution standards within its effective field. The chart refers to the first working sample of the Lomography Petzval Portrait Lens in July 2013. View the charts at higher resolution.