# Video shot with 102 year old lens



## Macified (Sep 18, 2003)

102-year-old lens takes surprisingly good video ? New Tech Gadgets & Electronic Devices | Geek.com

Glass is glass but it's still pretty impressive that such an old lens had the quality.


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

Yeah, read about this elsewhere, but didn't see the video. Thanks for the link.

What I find interesting is that a 100 yrs ago some guy spent a very long time grinding and polishing those lens elements by hand. Today, with robotics, lasers and computer driven machines, you'd figure they could mass produce lenses that would not only be far, far better, but a whole lot cheaper.


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## Smoothfonzo (May 17, 2007)

kps said:


> Yeah, read about this elsewhere, but didn't see the video. Thanks for the link.
> 
> What I find interesting is that a 100 yrs ago some guy spent a very long time grinding and polishing those lens elements by hand. Today, with robotics, lasers and computer driven machines, you'd figure they could mass produce lenses that would not only be far, far better, but a whole lot cheaper.


In telescope making, most of the time, glass that will be made into mirrors is ground and polished by hand. That's the way real amateur telescope makers do it. In fact, to be a member of the oldest telescope making club, you've first got to grind and polish a mirror by hand before you're even considered for membership, which is something I'll shortly start working on.

So, the process is very much still done even when there are machines that could do it for you. And what a lot of people don't realize is that older lenses are actually of a far superior quality than a lot of what's out there today.


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## ScanMan (Sep 11, 2007)

Macified said:


> 102-year-old lens takes surprisingly good video ? New Tech Gadgets & Electronic Devices | Geek.com
> 
> Glass is glass but it's still pretty impressive that such an old lens had the quality.


I like the video, but I'm not going to be a fan of that lens. I see many 100 yr old+ images with much less vignetting. It certainly helps the mood here, but in general use (even back then), I dunno...


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## Guest (Oct 9, 2010)

ScanMan said:


> I like the video, but I'm not going to be a fan of that lens. I see many 100 yr old+ images with much less vignetting. It certainly helps the mood here, but in general use (even back then), I dunno...


It seems that it was made for something with a smaller film plane ... it might have been a better choice for them to use something that wasn't a full-frame sensor (like a 7D or the like with the APS-C sensor). Not my choice for a lens either, but interesting to see it work on new gear.


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