Meyer Görlitz Trioplan 100mm f/2.8
- The Soap Bubble Lens - And Alternative Lenses
The old manual Meyer Trioplan lens is very famous for its overcorrected spherical aberration and the special bokeh one could get with it.
Its price gets higher and higher, but there are some alternative lenses:
The Meyer Goerlitz Primotar 135mm f/3.5
is known long for its simillar bokeh, but due to longer focal length and lower lens-speed it is not as popular as the original Trioplan 100.
I have found out that some cheap projection lenses are based on a very similiar lens setup - probably exactly the same:
The Meyer Diaplan 100mm f/2.8 and Pentacon AV 100mm f/2.8 could act as Trioplan 100 replacement.
The shorter Pentacon AV 80mm f/2.8 shows the same Soap bubble bokeh effect as well - and the short Domiplan 50mm f/2.9 as well. But due to their smaller entrance pupil the blur is smaller.
The current Nikon Nikkor 105mm /2.0 and 135mm/2.0 DC (Defocus Control) lenses show this effect as well - but only when the lens setting is more extreme as recommended in the user manual.
I think because of the manual restrictions this effect is not that well known for these autofocus lenses.
I made some comparison images - made with Canon EOS 5D, tripod and so the same distance to object.
Left Nikon DC Nikkor 105mm 1:2.0, Defocus Control 5.6-F - and on the right side the Meyer Trioplan 100mm at f/2.8
Pentacon AV 80mm 1:2.8 on the left side, and Pentacon AV 100mm 1:2.8 on the right side:
Nikon Nikkor 105mm f/2.0:
Just for reference - this is the same DC Nikkor lens, same setup, only Defocus control changed to 5.6-B!
Meyer Trioplan 100mm f/2.8:
Meyer Diaplan 100mm f/2.8:
Meyer Primotar 135mm f/3.5:
Pentacon AV 80mm f/2.8 projection lens:
