Unfortunately my beloved 102mm Super Six was stolen in China. While looking for a replacement I ran across this “big brother” to that lens. The 8 inch Super Six was the largest of the series (and the only one at f2.0 instead of f1.9 except for some made for military use). It has a front diameter of more than 120mm and weighs a whopping 3.5 kilos. Since this lens has an image circle that will easily cover 5″x7″, I find it a shame that all I have is 35mm full frame. I’m considering trying to mount it on a 4″x5″ Speed Graphic to see what it is capable of in large format. Like all Super Sixes, it is a classic double gauss design of six elements in four groups. That Dallmeyer were able to create such a fast lens of this focal length with this design is quite unusual and a testament to their skill.
As with most very fast telephoto lenses of the time, this one suffers from pretty severe longitudinal chromatic aberration, but that can be mostly cleaned up in post. The depth of field is absurdly shallow, and actually the lens can be very hard to use in terms of bokeh shooting, as elements behind the plane of focus quickly turn into an indistinguishable blur, not showing the very characteristic look for which Super Sixes are noted.
