How a cult Soviet lens was born

By Ivan Zotikov

I got my hands on a piece of photo history, namely, the technical documents that describe the design of the Soviet-era Tair-3 lens, the first design to come from the Soviet State Optical Institute.

But before diving into the technical side, I would like to tell the historical part. Where did the name Tair come from? This may be interesting more than just Soviet photographica collectors because many readers of our blog use this optical design. In the 1970s a book called ‘Photographic Optics’ was written by Professor David Samuilovich Volosov.

In its pages, in addition to the analysis of optical schemes, we learn small pieces of the author’s biography, and one of the episodes mentions a time during the war when the State Optical Institute was evacuated to ​​the city of Yoshkar-Ola in the Mari-El Republic on the fringes of Siberia.

Not far from there, about 51km away., there is a lake of karst origin called Tair. The lake is famous for its crucian carp and pike and is a protected area. Research and development of high-aperture telephoto lenses began in 1941–1942, when the task of creating ground-based photographic equipment for recording of very distant objects in low-light conditions and twilight was being addressed.

In the fall of 1943 (approximately the end of September or beginning of October), the head of one of the units, comrade Volosov, was fishing on this lake. In such a relaxed atmosphere, he came up with the idea of ​​a long-focus lens design, and the name was obviously in honour of the lake where the idea came from – Tair. Returning to his team, he began to conduct active research and calculations, and, as we see from the documents, by January 1944, the work was certified, approved, and transferred to production.

Thus, the life of a whole line of long-focus lenses for various purposes was started: from civil to military, aerospace, and television with this famous name. And the first Tair came complete with a light and convenient SLR attachment for a Leica-type rangefinder camera. In the Soviet analogy, cameras like the GOI Pioneer and FED were used to solve long-distance observation tasks. But first of all, in the conditions of Second World War military operations, it was decided to provide reconnaissance units and partisan detachments that could make operational decisions based on visual information from observing the enemy.

The device, which received the name FS-2 (Foto Sniper model 2), was equipped with a Tair-3 lens (300mm focal length). History has not preserved the exact number of copies manufactured at GOI, but we can assume from the available indirect data that there were no more than 100 sets at most. Perhaps this will become known over time, but only a few have survived to this day in full configuration.

What is known for sure is that the products were transferred for production to the KMZ plant in Moscow, where they were manufactured in the second half of 1944 and all of 1945. Then production was transferred to the KOMZ plant in Kazan, where FS-2 products were also manufactured. Unfortunately, at the moment, we do not know of any samples in full configuration from this plant, only Tair-3 lenses.

Here is what the author of this optical scheme himself writes about this (a quote from his book): “Normal anastigmatic telephoto lenses have a total length that does not exceed 80-85% of their focal length; the length of high-aperture telephoto lenses reaches 90-95% of their focal length. In this case, the relative aperture values ​​are 1:4-1:3, and in some cases 1:2.8-1:2.5, while the apertures of normal telephoto lenses remain within 1:7-1:5 and only sometimes reach values ​​of 1:4.5.” [p. 418]

The optical scheme of Tair, possessing exceptional simplicity, provides the following areas of possible optical characteristics: for long-focus systems with a focal length of up to 1000mm, the relative aperture does not exceed 1:5–1:4 with fields of view of about 10°; for lenses of medium focal lengths (200–300mm), the apertures can reach values ​​of 1:3.5–1:3 with fields of view of up to 15°, and for short-focus systems (50–150 mm), the apertures are 1:2.5 with fields of view of up to 20°.

With the complication of the frontal component – the use of a three- and four-lens combination, as well as with the transition from a simple negative meniscus to a more complex component, the relative aperture of the system can be increased to 1:1.5 or more. In recent years, many variants of lenses of various characteristics for photography, cinematography, and television etc, have been created based on this optical design, and the development of the design idea of ​​this design has led to high-quality apochromats ‘Apo-Tair’. [p. 422]

In many ways, the Foto Sniper products that have survived to this day have done so because in the post-war period in the USSR, there were many keen photo hunters; even the leader of the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev himself, had such a device for humane photo hunting in his arsenal.

Some of the preserved specimens, which remain in perfect condition (which is very important for collecting photographic equipment), were gifts from the GOI enterprise and several ministries to VIPs of that period, both inside the USSR and beyond. The Foto Sniper products continued to be produced until the fall of the Soviet Union, though in many ways it underwent many functional changes: the buttstock was replaced from wooden to metal, the lens mechanics changed many times, innovative design changes were proposed to ensure ease of use.

Today, from the point of view of collecting, the very first device produced by the State Optical Institute is not only one of the most interesting examples of Soviet photographic equipment, but of any era at all.