Enlarging lens performance at infinity

Gesture said:

Are process lenses in a similar territory for using in general photography?

Click to expand...

I tried a couple (one Schneider and one Rodenstock). They were both poor performers.

However, I'm always mindful that my sample size was n=1. In the large format world, people use process lenses and seem happy enough. I didn't try a second copy of either because I found better, faster alternatives.

Rob de Loe said:

Gesture said:

Are process lenses in a similar territory for using in general photography?

Click to expand...

I tried a couple (one Schneider and one Rodenstock). They were both poor performers.

However, I'm always mindful that my sample size was n=1. In the large format world, people use process lenses and seem happy enough. I didn't try a second copy of either because I found better, faster alternatives.

Click to expand...

Yes, same here… I tried a couple more though. Rodenstock Apo-Gerogon, Apo-Ronar, Goertz Apochromatic Artar, Boyer Apo-Saphir … nothing to write home about, at least from my limited experience so far and on a full frame sensor! The massive Zeiss Apo-Germinar-W 210 mm I have is a fascinating lens and better, but doesn‘t seem superior to any good enlarging lens. I was surprised at how well the simple Apo-Tessars and S-Tessars hold up though, but then again - all of these Process/Repro/Copy lenses are usually very slow and often hard to adapt. It‘s fun trying them though and I‘m sure many of them have their sweet spot magnification wise where they really shine. Also some might make decent tube lenses for macro work.

The older (Dagor) G-Clarons seem to have a good reputation but if you‘re not shooting large format a good enlarging lens with qualities at some distance is probably preferable. You can find a growing list of all kinds of alternative manual lenses tested for it here:

https://deltalenses.com/index.php/hall-of-fame-far-distance-f4-f8-average/

--
Experimenting manual lens enthusiast.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/simple_joy/

Infinity example test picture with Sony A7R II (42MP/FF) and Apo-Rodagon 50/2.8 at F4

Full picture:



100% center crop:



100% corner crop:



Setup:
A7R II
Techart Pro LM to FE AF-adapter
Pixco M42 to LM focusing helicoid adapter
M39 to M42 ring
Rodenstock Lens
40.5 to 49mm step-up ring
49mm lens shade

Perfectly usable for almost every purpose.



--
Regards, Thomas Bernardy
----------

simple-joy said:

fferreres said:

I tend to avoid process lenses when i don't know anything about them, except maybe Dagor lenses, which I may buy just because the lens looks good. I really like completely almost symetric lenses with just 4 surfaces. I think it's cool, awesome, it has something to it as opposed to very asymmetric designs.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the information. Your preference is very interesting - which symmetrical 4 element lenses do you like in particular?

Click to expand...

They have 6 elements not 4 (2 triplets on eaither side of the iris), but four air-glass surfaces. Goerz Dagor and the inverse equivalent from Voigtlander or other leading brands at the time (Zeiss, Schneider, etc).

simple-joy said:

Rob de Loe said:

Gesture said:

Are process lenses in a similar territory for using in general photography?

Click to expand...

I tried a couple (one Schneider and one Rodenstock). They were both poor performers.

However, I'm always mindful that my sample size was n=1. In the large format world, people use process lenses and seem happy enough. I didn't try a second copy of either because I found better, faster alternatives.

Click to expand...

Yes, same here… I tried a couple more though. Rodenstock Apo-Gerogon, Apo-Ronar, Goertz Apochromatic Artar, Boyer Apo-Saphir … nothing to write home about, at least from my limited experience so far and on a full frame sensor! The massive Zeiss Apo-Germinar-W 210 mm I have is a fascinating lens and better, but doesn‘t seem superior to any good enlarging lens. I was surprised at how well the simple Apo-Tessars and S-Tessars hold up though, but then again - all of these Process/Repro/Copy lenses are usually very slow and often hard to adapt. It‘s fun trying them though and I‘m sure many of them have their sweet spot magnification wise where they really shine. Also some might make decent tube lenses for macro work.

The older (Dagor) G-Clarons seem to have a good reputation but if you‘re not shooting large format a good enlarging lens with qualities at some distance is probably preferable. You can find a growing list of all kinds of alternative manual lenses tested for it here:

Hall of Fame: Far – f4-f8 Average - delta

Click to expand...

The Artar may be process or for other uses, but the version has an image circle roughly over 8x10, so you really test it in a FF sensor which is tiny.




8x10 coverage in light blue. Each square is a M43 sensor size. 4 squares is 35mm. The image in the center in my first post. The moth close up is the tiny central region in the photo sample I took. In FF, the lens is the same FF, around 160mm, but the image circle is extremely wider. The aperture tested was f22, akin to f2.8 and a FOV equivalent to 21mm in FF.2,432 × 1,648 (4 MP)

fferreres said:

The Artar may be process or for other uses, but the version has an image circle roughly over 8x10, so you really test it in a FF sensor which is tiny.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64674928?image=0

View attachment 2378505

8x10 coverage in light blue. Each square is a M43 sensor size. 4 squares is 35mm. The image in the center in my first post. The moth close up is the tiny central region in the photo sample I took. In FF, the lens is the same FF, around 160mm, but the image circle is extremely wider. The aperture tested was f22, akin to f2.8 and a FOV equivalent to 21mm in FF.2,432 × 1,648 (4 MP)

Click to expand...

My C. P. Goerz Apochromat Red Dot Artar 19in f/11 wide open is probably my highest-resolving lens 300mm or longer (in lp/mm) despite covering an image circle of over 19" at infinity. Best performance is around f/22, where it is essentially diffraction limited. Contrast isn't great, but that's to be expected for a lens dumping that big an image circle -- there's lots of light to bounce around behind the lens.

On the other hand, for example, my NuArc Process Lens 8 1/4" (210mm) f/8 is beautifully made, covers 8x10", and looks pretty sad until you stop it down somewhat. I recently got some Logetronic 135mm f/2.2 Logetars, and they sort-of cover 4x5" with terrible IQ off axis. These things vary a lot....

ProfHankD said:

fferreres said:

The Artar may be process or for other uses, but the version has an image circle roughly over 8x10, so you really test it in a FF sensor which is tiny.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64674928?image=0

View attachment 2378505

8x10 coverage in light blue. Each square is a M43 sensor size. 4 squares is 35mm. The image in the center in my first post. The moth close up is the tiny central region in the photo sample I took. In FF, the lens is the same FF, around 160mm, but the image circle is extremely wider. The aperture tested was f22, akin to f2.8 and a FOV equivalent to 21mm in FF.2,432 × 1,648 (4 MP)

Click to expand...

My C. P. Goerz Apochromat Red Dot Artar 19in f/11 wide open is probably my highest-resolving lens 300mm or longer (in lp/mm) despite covering an image circle of over 19" at infinity. Best performance is around f/22, where it is essentially diffraction limited. Contrast isn't great, but that's to be expected for a lens dumping that big an image circle -- there's lots of light to bounce around behind the lens.

On the other hand, for example, my NuArc Process Lens 8 1/4" (210mm) f/8 is beautifully made, covers 8x10", and looks pretty sad until you stop it down somewhat. I recently got some Logetronic 135mm f/2.2 Logetars, and they sort-of cover 4x5" with terrible IQ off axis. These things vary a lot....

Click to expand...

Wow, 19" is more than I thought would be possible. By the way, I have two 19" Artars. When I first looked at these lenses, I judged them as just big lenses for large format, without thinking much about them. I didn't think how difraction limit is different, or what f6.8 or f7.7 for many dagorswould look like in a 8x10 or f11 for the Artar in a 12x14 plate.

Then I did that image above. The area is FF * 4* 4* 4. That's 64 times the area of FF, and 256 times the area of a M43 sensor. F11 as we see in a FF sensor, what would it look like for the image these lenses produce? f11 FF as we know it would be equivalent to f5.6 for MF, f2.8 DOF for 4x5" and f1.4 for 8x10". So for 14x12", would look like a f1.1 or so in DOF. So when someone reads that stopped down to f/22 is best for some of these lenses, they think, oh that's already diffracted for FF and would never use anything above f11, but in reality, if you look at what these resolve, it's just a bit unberable. Of course we don't have the sensors, and in FF we capture 1/64 or 1/90 of the image circle. of course, 90 TIMES more light that the sensor can cover goes into sensor chamber, and it will reduce contrast significantly.

I mention this because many of the enlanrging lenses here are for much longer sizes, they are taking MF or larger images, and projecting it into a flat much larger area. So the actual stopping down makes sense, and the larger the sensor, the more these lenses make sense. That they do nice images with high resolution FF cameras is a bit of a miracle.

I am going to try this setup. I even have the 40.5mm rings and even hoods as they match Contax ring sizes, and it's usual to have a 40.5mm to 49mm as C/Y and many other cameras had that ring size (for filters, etc).

fferreres said:

simple-joy said:

fferreres said:

I tend to avoid process lenses when i don't know anything about them, except maybe Dagor lenses, which I may buy just because the lens looks good. I really like completely almost symetric lenses with just 4 surfaces. I think it's cool, awesome, it has something to it as opposed to very asymmetric designs.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the information. Your preference is very interesting - which symmetrical 4 element lenses do you like in particular?

Click to expand...

They have 6 elements not 4 (2 triplets on eaither side of the iris), but four air-glass surfaces. Goerz Dagor and the inverse equivalent from Voigtlander or other leading brands at the time (Zeiss, Schneider, etc).

Click to expand...

Thanks! I misread, of course. That‘s different… I can‘t think of many though. Will have to look some of the lens designs up.

fferreres said:

I am going to try this setup. I even have the 40.5mm rings and even hoods as they match Contax ring sizes, and it's usual to have a 40.5mm to 49mm as C/Y and many other cameras had that ring size (for filters, etc).

Click to expand...

You won't be disappointed. You may find faster 50mm lenses but not many better ones.

Some other examples:











--
Regards, Thomas Bernardy
----------

Looks great! Will have to use mine some more as well, it seems.

looking at the Zeiss datablatt for their macroplanars one can easily see the difference beween conjugates. The lenses are opotimized for 1:10 so the MTF graphs at infinity are not quite as perfect.

I assume the same is the case for all other optics designed for a specific object distance although different designs may be more or less vurlnerable-

p.

paul hofseth said:

looking at the Zeiss datablatt for their macroplanars one can easily see the difference beween conjugates. The lenses are opotimized for 1:10 so the MTF graphs at infinity are not quite as perfect.

I assume the same is the case for all other optics designed for a specific object distance although different designs may be more or less vurlnerable-

p.

Click to expand...

I think will be the case for all enlarging lenses as well, regardless of design, but I am illitirate with regards to discussing optical details other than general classic actual lenses themselves. So in this case, for makro planar, I searched for a datasheet and say 100/2.8,


It is a floating design (can't read the conjugates, not sure what I'd look at). However, for an enlarging makro planar, I think they'd never be using floating elements if it's used for enlarging, so I'd expect what you mention. Same with any other enlarging lens.

I don't think any lens optimized for a larger area, then designed for enlarging would give more resolution than a relatively affordable but well made used old lens designed for landscape.

In terms of interest, the Adapted forum has many like me I guess, not necessarily pragmatical in the quest of the cheapest lens that gets the absolute most in every sense of the lens, but in finding old underdogs that have something remarkable for some cases. More like "Look what this can do" than "beat this if you can". So in many cases, it's like finding a great movie, maybe didn't win 7 Oscars or 5 Cannes Awards, but has something remarkable and we had a great ime and would watch it again at a later time. May be even a favorite one.

I like the colors of the barren landscape / wetland. It's very hard to make these photos interesting, at least for me. The resolution is rather limited, is that the full res? Not that it matters for the composition, but it may with regards to expectations of the lens itself.

fferreres said:

I like the colors of the barren landscape / wetland. It's very hard to make these photos interesting, at least for me. The resolution is rather limited, is that the full res? Not that it matters for the composition, but it may with regards to expectations of the lens itself.

Click to expand...

Nope, these example pictures are downsized to apprx. 2.7MP.
The original resolution is 42MP from my A7R II.
Here is a typical landscape test picture in full resolutioin 42MP in JPG (converted from RAW in Lightroom), shot at F5.6:


A7R II 42MP/FF Rodenstock Apo-Rodagon 50mm/F2.8 @ F5.6 1/1000sec. ISO 100

Please note that there are some artifacts in the far distance due to hot air turbulences.

--
Regards, Thomas Bernardy
----------

There actually is an enlarging lens with a floating element:

Computar-DL 55 mm f/1.9

https://www.photocornucopia.com/1057.html

but it's pretty much the only one, if you don't account for some industrial lenses in that field, so it's more of a curiosity.

I'd agree with you - part of the fun (for me at least) is finding lenses that no one would think of as capable taking lenses and see what you're able to do with it. Like the tiny, completely unglamorous Agfa "Color-Magnolar II 60 mm f/4.5" I got out again recently... it's never mentioned anywhere, even when people are talking about adapting enlarging lenses, and yet it seems like a wonderful little gem to me, well made, nice rendering (Heliar), good with colors and well worth adapting, if you're also interested in macro-photograhy.




--
Experimenting manual lens enthusiast.

simple-joy said:

There actually is an enlarging lens with a floating element:

Computar-DL 55 mm f/1.9

https://www.photocornucopia.com/1057.html

but it's pretty much the only one, if you don't account for some industrial lenses in that field, so it's more of a curiosity.

...

Click to expand...

It's an interesting lens it's just a shame that they all seem to be adversely affecting by separation. It's a nice taking lens.

The floating element is intended to optimise correction at close range so when used outside of this range it changes the oof area, just as over and under corrected (for spherical aberration) lenses affect bokeh.

sensiblename99 said:

sensiblename99 wrote

It's an interesting lens it's just a shame that they all seem to be adversely affecting by separation. It's a nice taking lens.

The floating element is intended to optimise correction at close range so when used outside of this range it changes the oof area, just as over and under corrected (for spherical aberration) lenses affect bokeh.

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot! I know… I got a couple of them and the 65 mm one is most affected by it unfortunately! I‘d really love to try this lens in pristine state… it can still produce somewhat usable images ( ) but it‘s just a bummer.

With any Computar/Kowa the question is when, not if, the elements are going to fall apart. Such a shame.

Interestingly Ctein recommends the Beseler ColorPro 50 alongside the Computar and Rodenstock Apo-Rodagon 50/2.8 models. If it was a post-1985 sample, the Beseler ColorPro was the Computar but if, as seems more likely, it was a pre-1985 model, it was the basic Rodagon 50/2.8 which - to be fair - is close to the Apo in sharpness.

In the Delta test, the two are separated by 2% at near distances and 1% at far distance. However, the Apo's colour rendition is conspicuously richer (as you might expect) and contrast is slightly higher. Plus it's better screwed together.

But if you're putting the basic Rodagon in that company, along with the Nikon 50/2.8 N, why exclude the Hoya/Osawa, Meopta Meogon-S or (especially) Fuji EX and Minolta CE 50/2.8 models, which are as good or better? And then there's the Focotar 50/4.5 and Schneider Apo-Componon 60/4 . . .

There are so many great lenses in this area. Even the well-trodden Rodentsocks are under-appreciated, but the quality and value offered by some of those off the beaten track is off the charts.

Pertinent to the thread title and recent posts: no enlarger lens is as good at infinity or long distance as it is close-up. This problem is particularly acute with four and five element lenses that can be superb at short range, but wilt (especially in Zone 3) at distance – looking at you Focotar 100 II and Meogon-S 80/2.8. Triplets also suffer, but they tend to be equally murky at all distances (not looking at you Cassar 50/3.5), so the problem isn't as conspicuous. However, the additional correction offered by six-element lenses, particularly Plasmats and Orthometars, really reaps dividends at long range, and the best of them are fully useable (if not reference-grade) for distant subjects. Part of the objective of Delta was to quantify and compare this drop-off, and I've compiled extensive league tables showing just that in the Hall of Fame.

Keeping track of all the databases of literature is a difficult task. For example it's taken me awhile to realise

Pacific Rim Camera Reference Library

has a fair amount of stuff for some manufacturers.

I would heavily recommend going on archive.org, getting a free account and searching for information on projection lenses. I've had quite a bit of success finding old adverts etc that I haven't seen before:











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