Many think that, with lenses (and most everything else!), newer is better. Newer is really only different. Petzval lenses date back to the early days of photography. It's a simple lens design with a very distinctive look with center sharpness and a rapid falloff and sometimes a swirly out of focus area at the edges. I must get one someday. They are not that expensive.

A Primer on Petzval Portrait Lenses

Joseph Petzval's Design of 1840 While Chevalier was presenting his design to the world, Joseph Petzval, a Professor of Mathematics at Vienna University, came up with a lens design that provided for speeds of f/3.6 and had superb sharpness in the center of the image. This design was some twenty times faster than the original Chevalier f/15 landscape lens, and about a stop and a half faster than Chevalier's f/5.6 Photographe a Verres Combine lens. The speed and performance of Petzval's design was nearly perfect for the purpose and literally gave birth to commercial photography, which started with the taking of portraits.

Petzval Picture Post Thread