Enlarger lens options.

I am well aware that probably all modern enlarger lenses are pretty good.
The question arises, is the Componon HM series any advantage for black &
white printing
over the Componon -S
I am pretty thick about reading any graph curves but the Componon - S curves
seem flatter than the HM ones.

The Rodenstock charts seem to be a lot easier to understand, well they are
marketed as such anyway.
Would the lens folk of this community consider the APO-Rodagon - N enlarging
lenses to be on a par with the
HM series or the Componon - S series? And does it matter. What about bigger
magnifications, say 12X.

Would all the modern (new) enlarging lenses, apart from the amateur series,
perform equally to the eye.

In article ,
"otzi" wrote:

I am well aware that probably all modern enlarger lenses are pretty good.
The question arises, is the Componon HM series any advantage for black &
white printing
over the Componon -S
I am pretty thick about reading any graph curves but the Componon - S curves
seem flatter than the HM ones.

The Rodenstock charts seem to be a lot easier to understand, well they are
marketed as such anyway.
Would the lens folk of this community consider the APO-Rodagon - N enlarging
lenses to be on a par with the
HM series or the Componon - S series? And does it matter. What about bigger
magnifications, say 12X.

Would all the modern (new) enlarging lenses, apart from the amateur series,
perform equally to the eye.

Isn't the APO Rodagon-N intended for copy work as a taking lens?

--
Charles Hohenstein (to reply, remove Gene Robinson)

"The sad huddle of affluent bedwetters, thumbsuckers,
treehuggers, social*climbers, homophiles, quavery ladies,
and chronic petition signers that*makes up the current
Episcopal Church . . ." -‹Thomas Lipscomb

On Thu, 08 May 2008 01:19:35 +1000, otzi wrote:

I am well aware that probably all modern enlarger lenses are pretty
good. The question arises, is the Componon HM series any advantage for
black & white printing
over the Componon -S
I am pretty thick about reading any graph curves but the Componon - S
curves seem flatter than the HM ones.

The Rodenstock charts seem to be a lot easier to understand, well they
are marketed as such anyway.
Would the lens folk of this community consider the APO-Rodagon - N
enlarging lenses to be on a par with the
HM series or the Componon - S series? And does it matter. What about
bigger magnifications, say 12X.

Would all the modern (new) enlarging lenses, apart from the amateur
series, perform equally to the eye.

Perhaps, this might help solve your quandary or, at least, be
enlightening.

Years ago, a friend of mine, a Rochester Institute of Technology graduate
in the photo processing and laboratory fields, owned a pro lab, a dream
of his. He had all manner of enlarging lenses of all makes and models--
Componons, Comparons, Rodagons, and some I'd never heard of. One day,
the Rodagon rep came in and gave him a couple Apo-Rodagons to try out.
They were a new design. To make a long story short: He ended up
replacing EVERY enlarger lens in the lab with Apo-Rodagons for both color
and b&w. He said that you could actually see the improved image quality
with the naked eye even in an 8x10 print, and they did prints up to 8x10
feet. But to truly benefit from the superiority and flatness of field of
the lenses, you had to use glass carriers to hold the film perfectly
flat, and all the stages of your enlarger had to be in perfect alignment
and parallel to the vacuum printing easel.

Stef

I've accumulated a large number of good lenses over some time and also
recently got about 20 more in a purchase of a pro lab /business odd
lot. I decided to test the most desirable ones for my own duty and
took time with a Versalign rig to get all planes in proper alignment
for a run through.

The 40HM, 45HM and Rodagon APO 50 were judged about equal and all were
only slightly ahead of the standard Rodagons and Componon-S but only
discernible at higher magnifications. The single Nikkor 50 2.8 was
slightly less sharp than the others mentioned but this could easily be
a single sample variation as these enjoy a good reputation. An odd
Fujinon 49.9 EFS did very well and was nipping at the APO heels and I
believe anyone would be happy with it. A 63mm Nikkor was also in this
same class as was a 40WA Rodagon.

The Rodagon 80 APO and Componon HM 90 seemed equal to each other and
in practice these show a very slight advantage for the Rodagon as
there is something about how it renders mid tone/skin tones that is
especially nice, at least with my materials and practices. Again, the
standard Rodagons and Comp-S did well against these until more extreme
enlargement sizes. A Nikkor 80 showed poorly but it had a bit of dust
internally and may not have been a good sample. A single Componon S
100 did nicely and did slightly better than a pair of 105 Nikkors.

It was fun to have all of these nice chunks of glass all in one place
for some comparisons. I learned that I could likely be happy with
most any of them but use the APOs in general use for little more
reason than the psychology of having the best glass on the machine. I
would describe myself as "fussy" regarding optics and I'll admit that
this entire exercise had me conclude that it is truly hair-splitting
to discern any real world difference in any of these good quality
choices. Perhaps if I worked in color, I would find characteristics
that would favor one over another. In black and white, my best tools
for quality in darkroom projection has turned out to be my alignment
tool and grain focuser! Any of the differences I've highlighted were
very, very slight and had me pondering long and hard to tell any
difference.

On Thu, 8 May 2008 01:19:35 +1000, "otzi" wrote:

I am well aware that probably all modern enlarger lenses are pretty good.
The question arises, is the Componon HM series any advantage for black &
white printing
over the Componon -S
I am pretty thick about reading any graph curves but the Componon - S curves
seem flatter than the HM ones.

Craig Schroeder
craig nospam craigschroeder com

Thanks for all the input folks. I was curious but unconvinced. Just
wondered why so much was invested for so little gain. But these responses
were very encouraging.
Thanks.


"Craig Schroeder" wrote in message
...
I've accumulated a large number of good lenses over some time and also
recently got about 20 more in a purchase of a pro lab /business odd
lot. I decided to test the most desirable ones for my own duty and
took time with a Versalign rig to get all planes in proper alignment
for a run through.

The 40HM, 45HM and Rodagon APO 50 were judged about equal and all were
only slightly ahead of the standard Rodagons and Componon-S but only
discernible at higher magnifications. The single Nikkor 50 2.8 was
slightly less sharp than the others mentioned but this could easily be
a single sample variation as these enjoy a good reputation. An odd
Fujinon 49.9 EFS did very well and was nipping at the APO heels and I
believe anyone would be happy with it. A 63mm Nikkor was also in this
same class as was a 40WA Rodagon.

The Rodagon 80 APO and Componon HM 90 seemed equal to each other and
in practice these show a very slight advantage for the Rodagon as
there is something about how it renders mid tone/skin tones that is
especially nice, at least with my materials and practices. Again, the
standard Rodagons and Comp-S did well against these until more extreme
enlargement sizes. A Nikkor 80 showed poorly but it had a bit of dust
internally and may not have been a good sample. A single Componon S
100 did nicely and did slightly better than a pair of 105 Nikkors.

It was fun to have all of these nice chunks of glass all in one place
for some comparisons. I learned that I could likely be happy with
most any of them but use the APOs in general use for little more
reason than the psychology of having the best glass on the machine. I
would describe myself as "fussy" regarding optics and I'll admit that
this entire exercise had me conclude that it is truly hair-splitting
to discern any real world difference in any of these good quality
choices. Perhaps if I worked in color, I would find characteristics
that would favor one over another. In black and white, my best tools
for quality in darkroom projection has turned out to be my alignment
tool and grain focuser! Any of the differences I've highlighted were
very, very slight and had me pondering long and hard to tell any
difference.

On Thu, 8 May 2008 01:19:35 +1000, "otzi" wrote:

I am well aware that probably all modern enlarger lenses are pretty good.
The question arises, is the Componon HM series any advantage for black &
white printing
over the Componon -S
I am pretty thick about reading any graph curves but the Componon - S
curves
seem flatter than the HM ones.

Craig Schroeder
craig nospam craigschroeder com

"otzi" wrote

Just wondered why so much was invested for so little gain.

The law of diminishing returns. When something is close to
perfection the cost of even a miniscule gain becomes
astronomical.

There is a universal "80/20 rule": you can get 80% of the
performance for 20% of the cost.

The most cost-effective approach to improving photography
is to buy a used Tessar-formula enlarging lens and spend the
savings on something worthwhile that will make a noticeable
and unequivocal improvement: a trip to someplace photogenic,
a workshop, a really good timer ...

--
Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
Darkroom Automation: F-Stop Timers, Enlarging Meters
http://www.darkroomautomation.com/index2.htm
n o lindan at ix dot netcom dot com

Nicholas O. Lindan wrote:
"otzi" wrote

Just wondered why so much was invested for so little gain.

The law of diminishing returns. When something is close to
perfection the cost of even a miniscule gain becomes
astronomical.

There is a universal "80/20 rule": you can get 80% of the
performance for 20% of the cost.

The most cost-effective approach to improving photography
is to buy a used Tessar-formula enlarging lens and spend the
savings on something worthwhile that will make a noticeable
and unequivocal improvement: a trip to someplace photogenic,
a workshop, a really good timer ...

True. Many fuzzy images are caused by tripod insufficiency syndrome.
Of course, fuzzy concepts in the mind of the photographer can also be a problem.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 15:25:01 up 1 day, 7:57, 3 users, load average: 4.29, 4.38, 4.35

"Nicholas O. Lindan" wrote in message
m...

The law of diminishing returns. When something is close to
perfection the cost of even a miniscule gain becomes
astronomical.

Sometimes astronauts become miniscule. It evens out.

spend the
savings on something worthwhile that will make a noticeable
and unequivocal improvement: a trip to someplace photogenic,
a workshop, a really good timer ...

I got a good timer but I'm not having a good time.

"otzi" wrote in message
u...
Thanks for all the input folks. I was curious but
unconvinced. Just wondered why so much was invested for so
little gain. But these responses were very encouraging.
Thanks.

Lots of snipping here.
There are a number of reasons for the newer lenses. One
is simply that lenses have a very long lifetime so buying
one often takes the buyer out of the market for some time
unless a "better" replacement can be offered. Another is
that computer aided design makes it easier to make new
designs and evaluate them. Before computers the lens design
procedure could progress only so far through mathematical
analysis at which point a sample lens had to built and
evaluated on the optical bench. The computer allows very
complex analysis to be made quickly so that new designs can
be brought much closer to optimum before one is made. Often
the difference between a computer optimized lens and one
designed by the older methods is slight. I also mentioned in
an earlier response to this thread that the optical glass
types available had changed necessitating redesign of many
existing lenses. Since many of these were designed before
computer optimization became generally available the
redisign for new glass types also resulted in either
improvement in the original design or a completely new
design.
Nearly all modern enlarging lenses are based on a
generic type known as a Plasmat as are many large format
camera lenses. These have several inherent advantages such
as low astigmatism which is important for flat field
applications such as enlarging. They are also have
relatively wide coverage angles.
Modern multi-coating also helps performance by
increasing the image contrast.
Keep in mind that any lens with fixed position elements
can be optimized for only one object to image distance. The
performance at other distances can be good but will not be
quite up to the optimum distance. Most camera lenses are
optimized for approximately infinity but enlarger lenses are
optimized for whatever distance corresponds to the
magnification the manufacturer thinks it will be used for
mostly. Some manufacturers, Rodenstock and Schneieder
particularly, specify the magnification range for their
lenses. While the lens can give satisfactory performance
outside of this range special range lenses will do better.
Both manuacturers offer lenses for relatively large
magnification, i.e., photomurals, as well as for more usual
size prints. Since the print size does not vary so much with
differences in format (one makes 8x10 or 11x14 from all
common negative sizes) the optimum magnification will vary
with the lens focal length, that is, it will be greater for
a lens for 35mm than for a 4x5 lens.
A high power grain focuser will often show up
differences in lenses that are much harder to see in a print
but may also introduce its own problems, for instance, some
grain focusers are not very well achromitized and will show
color fringes due to its own optics which are not present in
the image from the enlarging lens.


--
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Richard Knoppow wrote:
A high power grain focuser will often show up
differences in lenses that are much harder to see in a print
but may also introduce its own problems, for instance, some
grain focusers are not very well achromitized and will show
color fringes due to its own optics which are not present in
the image from the enlarging lens.

I made a comparison between some better enlarging lenses for 24x36mm
(Apo-Rodagon 2.8/50, Componon-S 2.8/50, Focotar 4.5/50, Focotar 2.8/40
and Rodagon 4/60) and compared them at about 8x enlargement (20x30cm
paper size). Each was perfectly adjusted using a Peak #1, a glass carrier
and all enlarger planes were adjusted parallel using a laser tool. All
lenses were closed 2 stops from wide open.

The result: The only one you could distinguish from the others was the old
Focotar 4.5/50. It had a little curvature of field visible at the extreme
edges. That's all... no visible difference for the other lenses.

You can see the differences between the lenses with the Peak #1. The curvature
of field is readily visible for the two Focotars. The two Rodagon
and the Componon-S were much better and nearly identical. The Apo-Rodagon was
a little better wide open than the others, but all 2.8 lenses were unuseable
with this opening (for my view of quality...). Stopped down, all
were excellent.

Martin