This lens had been sitting on the second hand store's shelf for over a year. I looked at it a few times over this period but never thought of buying it. Finally, I asked the shop owner casually how much he wanted for it. "$10" was the answer. Well, I could not pass up a good deal like that now could I?

I found an old T-Mount Vivitar 200mm f3.5 lens, which is a good fit for the focal length of the Wollensak enlarging lens. Like I did with the Rodenstock enlarging lens, I removed all the glass elements from the Vivitar lens, and, I thanked heaven, twice, that the enlarging lens has a standard 67mm thread, and the Vivitar also has a 67mm filter thread. A match made in heaven!

Almost all of the sample pictures I took show that the center of the pictures always seem brighter than the surrounding, and also shows very low contrast. This could be caused by internal reflections on the lens barrow, since some sections of it are white after removing the elements. I have since darkened the inside of the lens barrel with a black marker, but have not taken any pictures with it yet to see if there are improvements.

When I first looked at the pictures, my jaws dropped. The details this lens can resolve is simply astonishing when focused properly, even wide open!!!! The sharpness is unreal, all the way to the corners on full frame, again, even wide open. I must spend more time to explore what this lens can do. The only frustrating thing about this lens is the very long minimum focus distance-- about 5 meters or 15 feet.

After painting the inside of the lens barrel black, and added a lens hood, image contrast has improved quite a bit, but I think the hood is not long enough to be effective, as some of the pictures still show lack of contrast.