El Nikkor vs. Apo-Rodagon ??
Doug McFarland
In a never-ending struggle for sharp crisp images, I'm thinking
of upgrading my enlarger lens. I'm using an El Nikkor now and
was thinking of investing in a Rodenstock Apo-Rodagon.
I use Schneider Apo-Symmars on a large format camera and print up
to 10x13 inches from 6x7 or 6x9 format. Assuming this doesn't
change, would I really see a difference with the Rodenstock
for B&W work ?
--
doug
mcfa...@eso.mc.xerox.com
mcfarland...@xerox.com
===================================================
Barry Sherman
>In a never-ending struggle for sharp crisp images, I'm thinking
>of upgrading my enlarger lens. I'm using an El Nikkor now and
>was thinking of investing in a Rodenstock Apo-Rodagon.
>I use Schneider Apo-Symmars on a large format camera and print up
>to 10x13 inches from 6x7 or 6x9 format. Assuming this doesn't
>change, would I really see a difference with the Rodenstock
>for B&W work ?
About a year ago I went through the same thing. I was using an El-Nikkor
150mm and was dissatisfied with edge/corner sharpness. I also hoped to
shorten my exposure times when using slow papers. Since the catalogs
claim that the APO lenses from Rodenstock and Schneider give super-sharpness
even when wide open I splurged on a Rodenstock APO-Rodagon 150mm.
When I did a test print at 16x20 magnification from a 4x5 neg I was surprised
at how blurry the corners were with large apertures. So I went out and bought
a Schneider APO-Companon 150mm. Yup. Crazy, eh? :-)
Then I spent two weeks testing the three lenses side-by-side. (And having
nightmares about damaging one of those expensive lenses [$1200 and $800
respecively] so as to be unable to return it. :-) I made bunches of 4x5 sized
prints from a corner of my test negative, a b/w snow scene with lots of
finicky detail.
The results were surprising and disappointing. Neither of the APO lenses
were worth a damn wide open or "wide-open minus one stop". Neither was
better than the El-Nikkor at wide apertures.
The Schneider was noticibly better than the Rodenstock, despite costing "only"
3/4 what the Rodenstock did. I returned the Rodenstock.
The El-Nikkor was sharpest at f11. So was the Schneider. At f8 the Schneider
was sharper than the El-Nikkor was at f11.
I kept the Schneider APO-Companon and sold the El-Nikkor.
Then 7 or 8 months passed. A rec.photoer and I were talking about this
stuff and I sent him my test prints (which are getting really yellow
from not having been properly washed :-). Before mailing them off I looked
at them again. Ya know, I think that when I was testing, my eyes got kinda
"over-sensitized". Now I find the differences between the El-Nikkor and the
APO-Schneider to be so slight as to be almost unnoticible. My immediate
reaction was "Geez, I can't believe that I spent the money on that expensive
lens when the differences are so slight!" Especially since the tests
were done at the corners. To me this implies that the difference would be
undetectable in the center.
Someone recently posted here a quote from an honest salesman who said that
you wouldn't notice the differences between regular and APO enlarging
lenses until you get up to really huge enlargements. I think that the
term "mural" was used. On the basis of my re-review of my tests I think
that I agree.
'Course, having one of these expensive lenses does set the mind at rest that
any sharpness problems are *not* due to the lens ... :-)
Barry
--
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Barry Sherman, Amdahl Corp. | "It's much easier to go to exotic places and |
| b...@uts.amdahl.com | capture spectacular scenes than to take a |
| | spectacular picture of a really boring |
| | green pepper". - Anthony Tse |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Amdahl, being a corporation, is a legal fiction. Therefore it is incapable|
| of holding, let alone expressing, opinions. Unfortunately, this has been |
| said of me as well. (I.e. My statments are mine, not Amdahl's.) |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
Robert Claeson
(Doug McFarland) writes:
>In a never-ending struggle for sharp crisp images, I'm thinking
>of upgrading my enlarger lens. I'm using an El Nikkor now and
>was thinking of investing in a Rodenstock Apo-Rodagon.
I basically have the same question, although I'm mostly using medium format
with Zeiss lenses and 35mm equipment with Canon lenses. I'm also interested in
the Schneider Apo-Componon's when compared to the Componon-S lenses.
Thank's,
Robert
Jonas Palm
I have tested the 50mm f2.8 APO-Rodagon N, versus the 50mm f2.8 El-Nikkor.
Note that N on the APO-Rodagon. It stands for 'Neukonstruktion' and means
that when they got their latest vector processor they started it
calculating
for a loooong time and came up with ways to improve on the already quite
good APO-Rodagon. The main difference is that it maintains excellent
contrast/resolution out to the edges even at large apertures.
I used the higher grade test reticle from 4-Designs, which is guaranteed
to 320 lp/mm and has linepairs down to roughly 500lp/mm. This was
projected using a condensor enlarger and evaluated using a grain focuser.
The advantage in edge resolution of the 50mm f2.8 APO-Rodagon N over
the 50mm f2.8 El-Nikkor AT FULL APERTURE was roughly a factor of 2! Center
resolution was roughly equal (much higher). The differences between
the two lenses became progressively smaller, (and the edge resolution
better) as I stopped down. There were still differences though.
Are the differences significant?
Well, I wanted the best, and got it. But few people are into high
resolution films, tripods, MLU and all the rest. Whether your optics-film-
methodology allows you to reap any benefit at all from a better enlarger
lens, only you can test and answer. For most I guess it only emphasizes
the grain. :-)
Depends on where you start of course. The EI-Nikkors aren't exactly bad.
In real life, I'd say that the benefits are small.
It does feel nice to be able to use a slightly larger than normal
working aperture, and still feel confident that the corners of the
print will not loose their edge.
The old 45mm f4 APO-Componon was also quite good, but I really like to
be able to focus at f2.8 (and still be able to resolve Tech Pan grain
clearly). Last month Schneider released a new 40mm f2.8 APO-Componon which
is supposed to replace the old 45mm f4. That is probably an interesting
option especially if you would benefit from the wider projection angle.
Jonas Palm