So lets turn next to Rodenstock and Schneider. I have only one reference point. Jeff Hirsch at Fotocare generously spent a morning with me on the subject. The one Rodenstock lens that he had in inventory (see may earlier note on dealer inventories) was the HR 32mm Digatar, which in terms of focal length matches up well with my Schneider 36 APO.
I've had the Schneider 36 for a reasonable amount of time so I know it well. Its resolution at the center just matches my 60 meg back and it has excellent local contrast giving it "bite" (remember contrast and resolution are a trade off). Its sweet spot just covers the 60 meg sensor - its image circle is substantially larger but resolution falls off so it is not really good for shifts or stitching. I use it on my Alpa TC, which matches with it perfectly.
Lance Shad and I put it on the Alpa Max with the IQ 180 - the back clearly oversamples the lens. There was no problem making LCCs centered and with small shifts. We wondered whether focus was off but this wide at f11 at 90 feet distance there's not much that can go wrong focus wise if you stick close to infinity. It's definately a keeper with the TC and a 60 meg back.
Here's a shot out of Digital Transition's window with the S 36 on the IQ 180 and 7mm of back rise and 5mm of shift, solely for the purpose of composing the image. As I said the rendering is lovely and there is no linear distortion, but the upper right (the center of the image circle) is just a little soft, and the lower left is, well, soft.
I'm using this on my blog as my daily photo.
So the question is if I switched to the 35 Rodenstock would I get to do shifts.
Jeff and I set it up in front of Fotocare with my 60 meg Hasselblad back. I took exposures at f11 and ISO 50 (the back's base ISO) along with LCC shots (which are called scene calibration shots in H-land). One of the things that we did was 17mm left shift and 17mm right shift with the back in portrait orientation setting up a stitch.
I'll post images below but at 60 megs its perfectly sharp and is sharp way out in the image circle - almost to the edges of the stitch that I described above. It has lower local contrast than the Schneider, which again should be expected because contrast and resolution trade off. It's issue is linear distortion, which in the confines of the centered 60 meg sensor is fairly benign and easily correctible barrel distortion. As you go out in the image circle this turns into totally wild mustache distortion - making this lens very hard to use if there are architectural subjects or other straight lines in the frame, or even if there are people or other objects with know shapes near the edges of the frame. These issues inhere, I believe, in very wide lenses of this design. So while the problem isn't resolution this lens has its own issue when used on a tech camera.
Center Crop:
Edge crop:
Amazing, isn't it.
But here's the bad nows. The whole stitched frame:
There's a lot of pavement in the image because we wanted to keep the camera orthagonal. There are a few dust motes - the back has come off of the camera a dozen times in the past day or two. Phocus handled the scene corrections without a hitch. Shifting the Hasselblad back horizontally whlle the back is in portrait orientation results in centerfolding, but it's subtle enough (depending on the amount of shift) that you don't notice it in a busy shot like this. I'll explore what it looks like in a later post.
So . . . the Rodenstock 32 is an outstanding candidate for shifts if you limit yourself to trees and rocks, but geometric distortion is an issue if you deal with straight lines. And the geometric distortion issue arrises on shifts; it's small and easily controlled when the back is centered.
The 32 is a tough focal length to design so kudos to Rodenstock for producing this - I would very much like to see how the 50 works out vs. my Schneider 48 - it ought to have much less distortion.
BTW all exposures in this series are at f11, more or less a little bit because the Copal shutter is unfriendly to half stops, and at the back's base ISO. As long as you're on a tripod and not stopping a basketball game why not.