Schneider 90/4.5 Apo-Componon HM on GFX 50R

I used an Actus to mount the lens:



Results:

• Center very good wide open, corners good but not great.
• Everything better at f/5.6.
• Best aperture is probably f/8.
• Has room for at least 5 mm of movements on the GFX with acceptable corner sharpness.

Details:



Jim

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I'm glad you found some time to check this lens out. I've been waiting for a post since you mentioned last year (I think) that you had this lens.

Your results line up with Schneider's MTF charts. f/5.6 isn't great even just in the image area of the GFX sensor, but f/8 is a huge improvement. For large shifts, f/11 trades off a bit of sharpness for better performance across the whole image circle.

Schneider's specs say it's an 87.8mm image circle, which at enlarger lens working distances should allow around 21mm of rise/fall in landscape, and 19mm in landscape. Interestingly, SK reports a 92mm image circle for the Apo-Digitar 90mm f/4.5, which apparently is just a tweaked version of the Apo-Componon HM 90mm f/4.5 that you have. Mind you, given this information from the respective data sheets, it surely doesn't look like a lot of tweaking...





I use the cousins of this lens (the Apo-Digitar 80mm f/4 and the Apo-Componon HM 60mm f/4 in its Apo-Componon Makro-Iris form) and find they're excellent performers as taking lenses at all distances. I haven't pushed the Apo-Digitar 80mm f/4 in terms of image circle, but the Apo-Componon Makro-Iris 60mm f/4 is supposed to have a tiny 60mm image circle, yet allows a nice clean 10mm shift in landscape orientation, which suggests the usable image circle is closer to 70mm. Perhaps your 90/4.5 has more room to move than the specs suggest.

JimKasson said:

I used an Actus to mount the lens:



Results:

• Center very good wide open, corners good but not great.
• Everything better at f/5.6.
• Best aperture is probably f/8.
• Has room for at least 5 mm of movements on the GFX with acceptable corner sharpness.

Details:

https://blog.kasson.com/gfx-50s/schneider-90-4-5-apo-componon-hm-on-gfx-50r-f-5-6/

https://blog.kasson.com/gfx-50s/schneider-90-4-5-apo-componon-hm-on-gfx-50r/

Jim

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This is interesting to me as well as I have some old Schneider and Mamiya large format class laying around as well. I heard digital made it all junk but never saw any evidence. I have a couple of Symmar's, Componon's and Sekor's around. I'll be reading with interest in your findings.

rbf said:

This is interesting to me as well as I have some old Schneider and Mamiya large format class laying around as well. I heard digital made it all junk but never saw any evidence. I have a couple of Symmar's, Componon's and Sekor's around. I'll be reading with interest in your findings.

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I'm not doing Jim-calibre testing, but I do use older film-era lenses on my GFX 50R with results that I find very pleasing. If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you'll see a link to a Google drive that has full-resolution JPEG files at f/8-f/16 for enlarger and medium format lenses I use or have used. The test shots are all at infinity.

Are your enlarger lenses Componon, Componon-S or Apo-Componon HM? That list is the order of quality you can expect. Robert O'Toole, who runs the superb Close-up Photography site demonstrates that for macro work, some of the Componon lenses are 90-95% of the Componon-S lenses. I have some Componon-S and Some Apo-Componon, and the ones I use are terrific. If one of your Componon lenses is actually a Componon-S 80/4, then you're in luck because it's excellent.

I've tried my old Fujinon-W large format lenses and was pleasantly surprised. They hold up quite well. They are more awkward to use and typically have vastly more image circle than you'll need even if you shift, but they work.

I don't know about your Sekor lenses. I do use some SMC Pentax 645 to good effect.

If you're not planning to use camera movements, using lenses like this may not be worth the bother. However, if you'd like to be able to use tilt and shift in your photography, they are the way to go.

Jim, prompted your post, I I've inserted below a recent closeup image I've shot with the Apo-Componon 60 F/4 HM, which I find performs very well for closeup on my GFX-50R - taken in a NZ (southern hemisphere) spring! I use it as a fixed focus lens, mounted via an FD-GF adapter, and with old Canon FD extension tubes, of which I have in a variety of sizes, to set the magnification. This one is a stack of five images, processed in Zerene Stacker and finished off in Photoshop. I've included both the full frame and a clip at 100% to show the fine-detail rendering of this lens.

-John




Full image

Navman said:

Jim, prompted your post, I I've inserted below a recent closeup image I've shot with the Apo-Componon 60 F/4 HM, which I find performs very well for closeup on my GFX-50R - taken in a NZ (southern hemisphere) spring! I use it as a fixed focus lens, mounted via an FD-GF adapter, and with old Canon FD extension tubes, of which I have in a variety of sizes, to set the magnification. This one is a stack of five images, processed in Zerene Stacker and finished off in Photoshop. I've included both the full frame and a clip at 100% to show the fine-detail rendering of this lens.

-John

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I love this lens. It's one of my most used on my GFX 50R + Toyo VX23D outfit. I use the Apo-Componon Makro-Iris 60mm f/4 version (same optics as yours but in an industrial mount). It's excellent from close up to infinity.

Love the setup. Very compact, but Jim the 50r is decked out like a Parisian brothel (not that I would know.) More Moulin Rouge and Toulouse Latrec I hope you can take my attempt at humor. Cheers

M Kitzman said:

Love the setup. Very compact, but Jim the 50r is decked out like a Parisian brothel (not that I would know.) More Moulin Rouge and Toulouse Latrec I hope you can take my attempt at humor. Cheers

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It's easy to lose the grip, if you have an Allen wrench handy. You need to get an extension rail and a long bellows to use the LF lenses that you seem to favor.

Jim

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https://blog.kasson.com

M Kitzman said:

Love the setup. Very compact,

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.

M Kitzman said:

but Jim the 50r is decked out like a Parisian brothel (not that I would know.) More Moulin Rouge and Toulouse Latrec

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Yeah. Very cool, ain’t it?!

Gotta get one of them things.

Rich

Hi Jim, I saw your video on Chronography. Excellent work and a very impressive legacy with more to add to. Thank you for always sharing your expertise.

M Kitzman said:

Hi Jim, I saw your video on Chronography. Excellent work and a very impressive legacy with more to add to. Thank you for always sharing your expertise.

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Thank you.

If anyone else wants to see that slide show/talk, it's here:

JimKasson said:

M Kitzman said:

Hi Jim, I saw your video on Chronography. Excellent work and a very impressive legacy with more to add to. Thank you for always sharing your expertise.

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Thank you.

If anyone else wants to see that slide show/talk, it's here:

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I enjoyed your talk Jim. Thanks for sharing the link.

I like gaining a window into peoples' thinking so that I can better understand why they do what they do. I like work that emerges from a clear and consistent "why". Your ability to see and exploit artistic potential in technologies is a defining feature of what you do. For me, that's the thread that runs through all the projects you described, and ties them together into a coherent body of work.

Looks like a nice rig!

Very motivating. I need to break out the VX125 and get to work with some Fujinon large format glass...

When I do I'll post photos of that rig as well...

Great stuff! We have such excellent tools these days! If I didn't already have the VX125 I'd be first in line to get hold of a Cambo Actus!

Thanks for posting.

mplkn said:

Looks like a nice rig!

Very motivating. I need to break out the VX125 and get to work with some Fujinon large format glass...

When I do I'll post photos of that rig as well...

Great stuff! We have such excellent tools these days! If I didn't already have the VX125 I'd be first in line to get hold of a Cambo Actus!

Thanks for posting.

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I look forward to seeing your thoughts on how well the VX125 works. I tried a much older film view camera (Toyo D45M) and found that the tolerances weren't good enough. Plus it was very limiting in terms of lenses because the standards were not designed to come as close as I needed for a smaller sensor. The little brother of the VX125, the Toyo VX23D, works great though. Everything is much more precise, and I can use wider angle lenses.

The Cambo Actus GFX does look like a nice system. I have yet to handle one though.

Thx to Jom and all, very interesting to read the discusdion. I checked ebay and there are several offers from China displaying a diplication version type of this lenses. Could you comment? Could they be used for macro work or film scanning using Fuji Gfx? Thx so much

Michael_19 said:

Thx to Jom and all, very interesting to read the discusdion. I checked ebay and there are several offers from China displaying a diplication version type of this lenses. Could you comment? Could they be used for macro work or film scanning using Fuji Gfx? Thx so much

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I'm using an APO-Componon HM 90mm f/4.5 Makro-Iris (Type -0025). That's a common one from China. It's excellent both as a standard photography lens, and for close work.

The APO-Componon HM 90mm f/4.5 lenses are interesting ones because they come in a wide range of flavours, each tweaked slightly.

• The classic enlarger lens is one variant.
• The APO-Digitar 90/4.5 is the cells from the enlarger lens in a different housing.
• The industrial line scanning versions like mine are variants of the enlarge lens. If it really matters what distance they've been optimized for, check the data sheets.

Mounting the Makro-Iris ones is really simply. They use the clever V-mount system, onto which you can lock various adapter rings to get you to M42x1mm, M42x0.75mm, and 39mm x 1/26th inch thread (among other rarer versions). You can also use them with all the Schneider Makro components (tubes, helicoids, etc.)

Michael_19 said:

Thx to Jom and all, very interesting to read the discusdion. I checked ebay and there are several offers from China displaying a diplication version type of this lenses. Could you comment? Could they be used for macro work or film scanning using Fuji Gfx? Thx so much

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I've not tested the industrial versions of this lens, so I can't comment with any authority.

Michael_19 said:

Thx to Jom and all, very interesting to read the discusdion. I checked ebay and there are several offers from China displaying a diplication version type of this lenses. Could you comment?

Click to expand...

A related issue with duplication and some Chinese eBay vendors.

You will sometimes see identical images for an item for sale by several Chinese sellers. Many times none of them will have the product in stock. They put an ad up and if it sells, they buy the item on a local site like Taobao and resell it on eBay in a sort of arbitrage.

I would avoid these vendors. (Not all Chinese sellers do this, obviously).

Doppler9000 said:

Michael_19 said:

Thx to Jom and all, very interesting to read the discusdion. I checked ebay and there are several offers from China displaying a diplication version type of this lenses. Could you comment?

Click to expand...

A related issue with duplication and some Chinese eBay vendors.

You will sometimes see identical images for an item for sale by several Chinese sellers. Many times none of them will have the product in stock. They put an ad up and if it sells, they buy the item on a local site like Taobao and resell it on eBay in a sort of arbitrage.

I would avoid these vendors. (Not all Chinese sellers do this, obviously).

Click to expand...

+1

Also, you're also going to see multiple different accounts selling what appears to be the same thing. In a lot of cases, it's all the same person or group behind multiple accounts. I'm not sure what the point of that is, but I see it all the time.

This is also very common among some, but not all, of the Chinese eBay vendors.

Rob de Loe said:

Doppler9000 said:

Michael_19 said:

Thx to Jom and all, very interesting to read the discusdion. I checked ebay and there are several offers from China displaying a diplication version type of this lenses. Could you comment?

Click to expand...

A related issue with duplication and some Chinese eBay vendors.

You will sometimes see identical images for an item for sale by several Chinese sellers. Many times none of them will have the product in stock. They put an ad up and if it sells, they buy the item on a local site like Taobao and resell it on eBay in a sort of arbitrage.

I would avoid these vendors. (Not all Chinese sellers do this, obviously).

Click to expand...

+1

Also, you're also going to see multiple different accounts selling what appears to be the same thing. In a lot of cases, it's all the same person or group behind multiple accounts. I'm not sure what the point of that is, but I see it all the time.

This is also very common among some, but not all, of the Chinese eBay vendors.

Click to expand...

Rob, check the ratings for the individual accounts and number of ratings. I too have seen that, but one will be 95% and another 100%. But the lower number will have more reviews.

Just a way to gain sales as some buyers will only buy from 100% sellers.