For those of you who know me, you know I have a passion of vintage camera lenses. The Engineer in me finds them exciting and the photographer in me loves to experiment. Since 2019 I set of a goal of getting a lens from the WWII time period. My oldest lens at the time was from 1957, making anything from WWII over a decade older. While a surprising selection of options exist for the Ebay warrior, I specifically wanted an aerial lens. The WWII Kodak Aero-Ektars are highly prized aerial lenses for portrait photography and command similarly prized amounts of money. Given my tendency to look at what Russia/Soviet Union./USSR has to offer, I ended up coming across the URAN-10.
The URAN-10 (Уран-10) is a 10cm f/2.5 aerial lens from the 1940’s. While information exists, it’s hard to confirm with a number of repeat sources lacking. From what I can tell they were made beginning in 1943 and used in a phototheodolite. In simple terms, used from a plane to survey and map the ground with photography. While no photos of the original equipment seem to exist, a number of these lenses can be found on Ebay.
Working with an aerial lens presents its own challenges. The biggest hurdle is the lack of focusing mechanism. In its original equipment, most aerial lens are used exclusively at infinity focus. This means one will need to be added so it can be used like a regular lens. Another quirk is the coating. Aerial lens operate high in the sky and far away from their target. This often causes a color shift which the coating aims to correct.
Thankfully most of the process to adapt to the Nikon Z body was relatively straight forward.. I picked out a Fotasy Nikon Z to M42 focusing helicoid to use a base. Purchasing a focusing unit would be cheaper and more straight forward than designing my own. Plus this designs allows me to quickly swap the lens to Canon EF and Sony E mounts quickly.
My first iteration suffered from some quirks but left me with a solid base to build my final model. Performance seems to be high and after a number of changes I got to a final model which I’ve been actively shooting with.
So far I’m very impressed with the nearly 77 year old lens. While it suffers from heavy lens flaring from head-on light, the bokeh is wonderful. At wide-open it seems to have a bit of a light glow which is surprisingly well controlled and adds a very unique look.
While editing goes a long way to bringing colors out of it, I look forward to shooting more with the lens. If it ever arrives, I have a URAN-27 on the way which I will adapter to my Nikon Z as well. While not strictly a successor, this is another vintage aerial lens from the Soviet Union in a 10cm f/2.5 form.
However I am almost at 3 months for overseas shipping due to COVID…. so I’m not holding my breath much thinking I’m going to be seeing it anytime soon.
I leave you with some more photos from the URAN-10.
