This is a wide angle lens that covers 8x10 inches. It is roughly equivalent to a 21mm lens in 35mm photography. The construction type I could not find in any literature. I disassembled it and it looked like a double gauss . But someone in the Large Format Photography Forum called my attention to the fact that in the 1957 Wollensak catalog there is a Raptar with the same focal and aperture that is a 8 elements in 4 groups. Like a Double Gauss in which each element is a doublet.



This Velostigmat appears in catalogs since 1928. The price in this Betax shutter was 71 USD the equivalent to 882 USD in 2008, in equivalent purchasing power. The following reproductions from Wollensak catalog, and a lot more from other lens/camera makers, you can find at Camera Eccentric website. Excellent online source.





Dismantling this lens is very easy because all glasses are in place with retaining rings that can be un-screwed. So I checked it again and found out that is is indeed a set of 4 doublets. 2 an 2 symmetricaly around the f stop.



Here you have it mounted in a Thornton Pickard roller blind shutter. For shooting, I use, of course, the Betax shutter in which the lens was mounted. What happened is: had I used a lens board I would not be able to focus at infinity with my Thornton Pickard 18x24 cm camera even with belows completely folded. The solution was inserting the lens in the rollerblind shutter.



Luckly enough, it fit perfectly there!!