Opticallenses

Information about the UV-Capable lenses formerly listed in the Lens Sticky is being revised. Transmittance Charts and results from Lens Test Charts are available in the following linked sections. More lenses will be added as time and money permit. The revised data is more informative and certainly more accurate.

UV-Dedicated Lens :: Special Use :: Historical These lenses having excellent UV transmission are no longer manufactured and are rarely seen from dealers or on Ebay. On this list are industrial enlargers, microscope lenses and other special purpose lenses. Most require significant adaptions for use on a digital camera.

Currently manufactured. Color corrected for 310-1100nm. Exceptionally sharp. No UV-Vis-IR focus shift. Transmission 290nm-1500nm. $5750(US). Hotspots at high magnification in this lens can be easily controlled via extension tubes or by a certain kind of lens shade.

About the UV Lens List For a lens to be on our UV Lens List, it must have at least one member or contributer who has either used it or tested it to confirm that the lens is UV-capable in some portion of the UV bandwidth. Our lists are by no means exhaustive, so please experiment and let us know of your discoveries. Please Note the following:

UniverseOptics.com a.k.a.Universe Kogaku America Universe Optics is a US company which makes the 78mm f/3.8 Quartz (UV8040) and the 105mm f/4.0 Quartz (UV1054B), both of which cover full frame but are not corrected. The lenses have a native C-mount with an underlying T-mount and are adaptable to the Nikon F-mount. Other more specialized UV lenses are also available.

UltravioletLens Glasses

Please PM Andrea B. on UltravioletPhotography.com with any corrections, additions or suggestions. Or write to rudbeckia ultravioletphotography com.

UV-Dedicated Lenses There are UV-dedicated, UV-capable lenses and ordinary lenses. A UV-dedicated lens is one which was designed and manufactured specifically for reflected UV photography. One of the most familiar UV-dedicated lenses is the UV-Nikkor 105/4.5. Others are discussed in later sections. Such lenses are very expensive and out-of-reach for most who want to try shooting UV. The next section will discuss the alternative: less expensive, non-UV-dedicated but UV-capable lenses.

Warning about Lens Scams The original UV-Nikkor 105/4.5 has become a very high-priced collectible. Prices have skyrocketed to the $4000-5000(US) range, maybe more. The lens has been seen offered at a much lower price in several lens scams across the internet. Do not fall for these scams! No one who is reputable will be selling the UV-Nikkor or any other rare UV-capable lens at a price under its current market value. Enlarger Lenses for UV An enlarger lens (EL) is used in a photographic enlarger for producing a print from a film negative. Some alternate photographic print processes require UV light to produce a contact print: cyanotype, platinum/palladium, gum, carbon, Kallitype and Van Dyke. So, most ELs pass some ultraviolet light between 370-400nm, some beyond that. But note that there is no generally accepted range of UV transmission for ELs. The range will vary by brand and lens construction. Enlarger lenses also, of course, magnify and have a flat-field construction. So ELs can be very useful for UV macro work when reversed. There are several enlarger lenses listed in the Lens Sticky, but it is not intended to be exhaustive. Use what is listed there for further explorations and experiments. Enlarger Lens References:

UV-Dedicated Lens :: Photography :: Historical These photograpic lenses having excellent UV transmission are no longer manufactured. Most are rarely seen from dealers or on Ebay although the Carl Zeiss 60/4.0 UV-Objektiv and Nikon 105/4.5 UV-Nikkor may sometimes be found.

UV-Capability ? The amount of UV-capability of the lenses on this list varies. We have tried to list lenses that reach at least 350nm, but not all lenses have been formally tested. Investigate before purchase!

Section 5. UV-Capable Lenses This section contains a brief summary of our UV LENS TECHNICAL DATA board and a list of possibly good lenses which have not yet been measured.

. UV-Capable Lenses from Birna Rørslett Here at UVP, we term a non-UV-dedicated lens as a UV-capable lens if the following criteria hold. The lens must:

Focus shift is not problem at all when using Live View if you have sufficient UV illumination. Attaining sufficient illumination to use Live View for focusing in the UV case is not always easy especially for UV between 300-350 nm.

UV LENS TECHNICAL DATA contains a detailed analysis of some of the best lenses for reflected UV photography. This board is produced and directed by our member Ulf Wilhelm. This board is briefly summarized in Section 5 of this topic.

Mount Type ? Many lenses on this list may need modification of the lens mount and the use of focusing helicoids and/or bellows for use on your particular camera body. Under such modification, the lens may not focus to infinity. Investigate before purchase!

Birnian Rule of Thumb for UV-Capable Lenses from Birna Rørslett A decent UV-capable lens should require at most 3 stops more overall compared to the Nikon 105/4.5 UV-Nikkor or the Coastal Optics 60/4 APO. Measuring UV Transmission of a Lens I asked member Shane Elen what was needed to accurately measure the UV transmission of a given lens.  from Shane Elen Ideally you need a CCD spectrometer, or spectrophotometer (preferably in a dual beam configuration) with a monochromator, an integrating sphere, and a stable output UV-V-IR source. The integrating sphere helps ensure that the readings are independent of the incoming light ray angle. This will provide you with wavelength specific transmission response. To informally test UV lens transmission, it is possible to collect a set of narrow UV bandpass filters, mount them in some kind of holder and estimate a lens UV transmission by taking a UV photo of the mounted filters. Although the idea has been used before, Steve Smeed was the first in recent years to implement mounted UV bandpass filters in his clever Sparticle Board. Here is another example shown in an article by Enrico Savazzi: Filter Strip for Testing UV Lenses. See also Links to Informal Lens Transmission Tests.

UV lens camera

Sticky :: UV-Capable Lenses by Andrea G. Blum for UltravioletPhotography.com [Last Update :: 13 Nov 2023. Sticky formatting was cleaned up.]

Diffraction In photography, diffraction is the interference of light waves with one another caused by their passage through a lens aperture. The narrower the aperture, the more the diffraction. The spreading light waves' interactions cause interference patterns around the Airy disk which is recorded on a digital sensor as a loss of sharpness in an image. In UVIR photography, a key fact to note is that longer IR wavelengths spread more at a given aperture than shorter Visible or UV wavelengths. Hence IR shots are more prone to the effects of diffraction and UV shots less so. Thus, for example, if you make a Visible light photo with a sensor & lens combo that begins to show diffraction blur past f/8, then you might have to open up your lens to f/5.6 (or larger) to shoot a sharp IR version of the same photo. On the UV side, you might be able to stop down to f/11 (or smaller) and still stay sharp. Opening up in IR to reduce diffraction must be balanced against the need for stopped-down depth of field. Some diffraction can be compensated for in the editor by various sharpening tools.

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35mm f/3.5 Lenses for UV - not the only category Any reader of the lens lists here in this Sticky will have noticed a predominance of non-dedicated, UV-capable lenses in the 35mm f/3.5 category. As has been remarked elsewhere, simply constructed lenses with minimal coatings and no UVIR-reflecting or fluorescing glues or other fluorescing or problematic inner parts, have been proven useful for UV imaging. Many of the older 35/3.5 lenses with manual apertures or preset apertures fall into that category. Read this post by Enrico Savazzi for a bit more insight into this: 35mm lenses for UV photography. With the research done by Klaus Schmitt, Enrico Savazzi and others and several nice 35/3.5 finds made by Oleksandr Holovachov, Steve Smeed and others, we have accumulated a good listing of UV-capable 35/3.5s. This, of course, has spurred others to look into this category where they discovered that there were quite a few UV-capable 35/3.5 designs produced by various non-mainstream lens manufacturers. And nice discoveries; were also made in the associated 105/3.5 and 135/3.5 categories and listed here. This is not to say, however, that there are no UV-capable lenses in other categories. There are indeed quite a few. Reed Curry, for example, has found many UV-capable lenses in Exakta mount which are not 35/3.5s: see Exackta Lens List (Partial) for more about Exackta lenses in general.

Note from Editor: This Sticky began as a joint effort by the members of various forums who enjoy UV/IR photography. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, comments, proofreading, lists, links, measurements, experiments and all round good fellowship.

UV contactlenses

It is unlikely that any modern multi-coated, multi-element lens can be truly designated as a UV-capable lens. If the aim just is to detect flower patterns, such a lens might do adequate service in the 380 - 398 nm range. However, this in no way ensures the lens will render all there is of floral UV signatures or UV signatures of other subjects. For this reason alone using a UV-dedicated lens or a non-dedicated, but very UV-capable lens is advantageous. There's no predicting whether a given lens is UV-capable if it was not specifically designed for UV shooting. As noted, with a very long exposure an ordinary lens can often leak enough near-UV to produce an image, but it likely will not record the fine surface details that UV can reveal. What we can say generally about non-dedicated, UV-capable lenses is that they tend to have the following construction:

UV Focus Shift Focus shift between the Ultraviolet & Visible wavebands in a lens is a form of axial chromatic aberration that occurs because shorter, higher frequency UV wavelengths focus at a different distance along the longitudinal axis of a typical lens than do longer, lower frequency Visible wavelengths. Such wavelength-induced focus shift is a topic of particular interest in UV photography when using an external filter and a camera that has no Live View. First you must focus the lens in Visible light before mounting the dark UV-pass filter. After mounting the filter you might have to adjust your initial focus if the lens has not been designed to also bring the UV rays to the Visible plane of convergence. With a bit of trial and error you should be able to determine the proper correction at various apertures and note it for future reference. UV focus shift is less of a worry with an internal UV filter because during conversion the auto-focus can be adjusted a bit to compensate for UV for most lenses at most apertures.

UV-Dedicated Lens :: Special Use :: Currently Manufactured Quartz lenses with deep UV transmission are currently manufactured for various industrial uses, but please be warned that many of these lenses may not be corrected over their transmission range and would therefore not be suitable for UV photography on a DSLR or mirrorless camera due to serious chromatic aberration. Such lenses, like their historical counterparts (see Asahi Pentax Quartz Takumar in the next table, for example), are intended for use with narrow bandpass filtration. Many of them may not fully cover a DX or FX sensor, although some can. We cannot provide an extensive list, but here are two manufacturers of such lenses and an example of their products. An internet search will provide other examples.

ResolveOptics.com Resolve Optics is a UK company which makes the telescoping UV-forensic 60mm f/3.5 (228-000) lens and others. The UV-forensic lens transmits between 230nm-500nm and is corrected. No online technical information is available about this lens, but it is discussed briefly in this white paper: Ultraviolet Technology Aids Forensic Investigation. The UV-forensic lens 'images onto' the Horiba SceneScope RUVIS (a reflected UV imaging system).

UV shooters such as Boon Tang, Vivek Iyer and Igor Butorsky have found other good UV-capable lenses outside the 35/3.5 category which are listed below. So let us keep up the search! We will continue to add some examples of non-dedicated, UV-capable here as they are brought to our attention.

UV Focus Shift ? Most of the lenses listed below have some degree of the UV focus shift discussed above. Lenses without such focus shift are noted. Consider converting a camera with Live View to avoid dealing with focus shift. Investigate before purchase!