Petzval 80.5mm f/1.9 MKII Bokeh Control Art Lens Review: It’s All About the Swirl by Alec Pain

Written by Alec Pain (Alastair Place)

I bought the Lomography Petzval 80.5mm f/1.9 MKII Bokeh Control Art Lens on one of those whims – you know the ones – I’d just watched Poor Things and got hooked on wanting to take the kind of portraits that the Lomography site shows on its website.

Except, of course, I don’t have a constant stream of models – either a willing spouse, friends or actual models – to practice on, at least not regularly.

But I got to thinking – I could use it for something other than portraits…

Find the Lomography Petzval 80.5mm f.19 MKII Bokeh Control Art Lens at Adorama or at lomography.com.

An Overview of the Petzval Bokeh Control Art Lens

I bought the lens directly from Lomography – it’s £399 on the Lomography EU store and around $499 on the US/Global store. If you live in the UK, remember that you will also have to pay around 20% in customs charges. (I don’t blame Lomography for this I blame the people who voted to leave the EU!)

There’s a choice of two lens fits: Canon EF or Nikon F. That means that it fits most Nikon F cameras (I also own a Nikon Z but can use the lens with an adapter on it).

It has a focal length of 80.5mm with an aperture range of f/1.9 to f/16.

The bokeh control version of the Petzval lens allows you to choose the level of swirling bokeh you’d like in the background. There are seven different swirl levels: Level 1 with a sharper background with almost no swirl all the way up to Level 7 with the entire background swirled.

The lens comes with four aperture plates, which are inserted into a slot on the lens. There’s a standard one, plus a heart, a diamond and a star.

These can be swapped very easily whilst shooting. They are very small – and I’m surprised that I’ve not actually lost one yet because, well, I’m always losing something.

Testing Out the Bokeh Swirl

I finally found my inspiration at the beginning of April, when my wife and I visited a local arboretum in the midst of Spring. Batsford Arboretum is a few miles from Moreton-in-Marsh in the Cotswolds in England and around 30 minutes from home. Spring had definitely sprung and it was glorious to see color again after the winter months.

The Petzval lens is manual focus and my Nikon N50 didn’t recognize the lens – forcing it to give out a flashing CPU warning. I was worried at first that I wouldn’t be able to take any pictures at all, but I just needed to ignore the warning – and press the shutter.

For the most part I was photographing in really bright sunlight, and, having forgotten to bring my light meter, I was able to put the lens into my Nikon D3300 to get some kind of reading (it suggested a shutter speed of 3000-4000!). I set the film (Lomo Turquoise) to 400 ISO and shot a shutter speed of between 1000-2000 as that was the fastest the Nikon will go – but I wanted to see the results at f1.9 (hence the high shutter speed) with a rating of 7 on the bokeh scale on the lens!

The lens allows you seven scales of bokeh (you can turn the lens from 1 to 7) – and you can see through the lens of your SLR more or less the effect you are going to get. I didn’t venture much past f2.8. Focus is done through the third dial on the lens – closest to the camera. It’s very straightforward – the only thing you can forget is which part of the lens your hand is turning!

As you can see the swirl of the lens is pretty incredible, retaining a sharp focus on your subject, whilst blurring (or should we say “bokehing!”) everything behind it:

It also creates a dreamy sensation to large trees with plenty of blossom on them:

Using the Aperture Plates on the Petzval Lens

The fun was then had in adding those aperture plates and seeing what effects I could get. You can see the subtle heart shapes here:

And here’s a direct comparison between each lens. Look closely and you can see hearts, diamonds, stars and a normal bokeh.

I did take one portrait of my wife and you can see the swirl behind her:

Using the Petzval Lens with Harman Red and Lomo Metropolis

Once I got the scans back from The Mini Lab in Northampton, I wanted to try more!

My mother‘s garden is full of the most beautiful flowers and the Petzval lens does them justice. I had taken two rolls in around twenty minutes. I used Harmen Red film and Lomography Metropolis film.

Lomo Metropolis

Harmen Red

Other Ideas for the Pentzal Bokeh Control Lens

I think having a greater distance behind the subject will be interesting to try next. I’d also like to try some night portraits with it.

One thing I did try was some double exposures with Lomo Purple in London, using the shapes of cars and neons in deliberate blur and then rewinding the film and taking some shots of various shop window digital displays.

It’s certainly something I’ll try again, perhaps dialing down my second exposure to get more contrast:

And lastly, there’s an almost Holga feel about using it for landscapes (there’s also a smidgen of a Speed Graphic with an Aero Ektar lens to them).

I’ve just come back from a holiday and these were from my trip to Northumberland. I felt very jealous standing next to a guy who had a 500mm lens and a super fast auto focus camera, and I had many misses in trying to shoot a puffin flying but one of the shots was in focus – and look how blurred the edges are:

One the long, vast beaches too, I marveled at the tiny people in the distance:

And you can see from the two shots of the beach huts at Seaton Sluice, you can see the fall off on the edges:

Conclusion

Far from being a one-trick lens, I think the Petzval has some real potential beyond the “turning it up to the max” 7 of the bokeh and for portraiture.

Whilst I’m still keen to do a portraiture shoot (particularly at night), I feel there’s some mileage in shooting those beautiful landscapes or beach scenes with far away people, in double exposing films with hearts and diamonds and stars.

Thank you so much, Alec! Alec is a regular contributor here at Shoot It With Film, and be sure to check out his other articles, like Tips for Shooting Street Photography with B&W Film and Street Photography with the Minolta CLE 35mm Film Camera.

You can also check out more of his work on Instagram.

Leave your questions about the Petzval 80.5mm f.19 MKII lens below in the comments, and you can pick one up for yourself at Adorama or at lomography.com.

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Alec Pain

Alec Pain (AKA Alastair Place) is a pinhole and experimental photographer and a regular contributor for Shoot It With Film. Find his other articles here, such as How to Shoot Holgaramas and Finding Photography Inspiration Where You Live.

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