Surprising STEINHEIL f2.8/50mm lens for reflected UV photography I

Quite a few years ago I got an older lens, which was made many years ago by famous lens maker STEINHEIL. It is a possibly single coated, well made 2.8/50mm lens which attracted me, since it showed some seemingly good UV transmission when shining an 365nm UV LED through it. The surprise came when I had it under my spectrometer, revealing its high and deep reaching UV transmission, no other normal lens so far showed.

[click on image gets you a larger image]

Today now the spectrometric results as one of the best performing "normal" lenses for UV, slso showing the transmissing with the Baader-U filter, as well as a 290-340nm filter:



It gets pretty clear that this lens has a very high UV performance, at 365nm it transmits around 75%, very close to the Kuribayashi 35mm which has 80%. Its peak transmission with Baader-U filter attached is around 68% around 360nm. Using that deeper 290-340nm UV filter which peaks at 334nm with 68% transmission, it still has a 32% total transmission at its peak at 338nm.

 A very useful lens for reflected UV this seems to be, but photographic tests still needs to be done...

I have written about this lens more HERE.

Stay tuned, more will follow on that fascinating subject...

More info on this very interesting field may be found on my site http://www.pbase.com/kds315/uv_photos