Your favourite “bang for the buck” lenses

[Whisp3r]

You could look at 65mm lenses for large format as a stopgap. You don't have to send those to anyone to mount. Mounting them yourself is simple and reliable.

I would avoid the Nikkor SW 65mm f/4.5S. It has a good reputation on film, but the copy I tried on GFX had wicked field curvature that made it unusable wider than f/11. The Rodenstock or Schneider-Kreuznach offerings might be more promising. Fujinon-W lenses are great value too. I have not tried their 65mm, but their 125mm is a very nice lens on digital as well as film. They are also dirt cheap.

Many thanks for your thoughts Rob! I will have to figure out how to mount them on an RM3di, Pretty sure I'll find all the crucial info right here on GetDPI.

I've narrowed it down to Fujinon SWD 65mm F5.6, Rodenstock 65mm f/4.5 Grandagon-N, and Schneider-Kreuznach 65mm f5.6 Super Angulon. They all seem to cover 4x5 with (sometimes) room for movements so in theory should be fine on an IQ4 150 (probably!)
Only the Grandagon breaks the $500 barrier, the other two fall below the threshold of the main topic in this thread.

I have a (steep) learning curve ahead of me (on how to use Arca RM3di/IQ4/CaptureOne) anyway, before feeling confident enough to use the gear for professional assignments, so using large format lenses in the 60mm range as a stopgap is an excellent suggestion, thanks!

 

[Doppler9000]

+1 for use of tape

I cannot abide the sticky residue left by tape.

 

[John Leathwick]

Warren, your experience with the Nikkor M 200/8 is very similar to what I've just been through. I looked long and hard at these, but opted instead for a Fujinon A 180/9, which Fuji described as a Super Apochromat and cost me just under US$400. I would have gone with the Nikkor if I had also been able to find a Nikkor M 105mm, but these were discontinued before the longer M series Nikkors and so are harder to find. On Rob's recommendation I went instead with a Fujinon EX 105mm enlarger lens, which is a fantastic performer on my GFX/H-Universalis, so going with the Fujinon A 180 made sense as it uses the same 46mm filters. I've found accurately focusing an F/9 lens a bit of a challenge, as when using focus peaking I was consistently focusing too close and missing sharp infinity focus. However, with practice and careful target selection, I've been getting better results. I also found it has lower contrast than the Mamiya RZ lenses that I mostly use, but attribute at least some of that to the huge image circle - the 180mm is able to cover 5x7. My solution was to start with a cheap tele lens hood, which I extended with a flexible snout (below). Shooting the same scene with a manual shutter to fix the exposure length, RawDigger shows a definite improvement in overall contrast when I use the snout to cut down the image circle. Overall, I'm stoked with the lens, which rounds out a relatively cheap set of four lightweight lenses covering my most used focal lengths, i.e., Pentax-A 35mm, Fuji EX 75mm, Fuji EX 105mm, and Fuji A 180mm, these together weighing in at just 1.7kg when packed with their boards in a Tenba BYOB.

The first image was shot with left and right rear shift of 12.5mm, cropped to 16:9. I've tested shifts of +/- 25mm in portrait orientation which retain good sharpness out to the corners.
The second shows the lens with it's snout on my setup. I bought the the longer bellows primarily to extend my closeup capability compared to when using the bag bellows - the ability to use longer lenses was an unintended bi-catch! I'm in the process of making a more swept up hood extension that will have black felt inside a lightweight black outer that simply sits on the hood and can be extended as far as possible, depending on movements.

-John

 

[diggles]

I cannot abide the sticky residue left by tape.

Gaffer's tape, a photographer's duct tape, lol!

Normally I wouldn't use tape either, but for some reason the 80n ring doesn't snug up as tight to the rotamount remove ring as I would like. The tape is extra insurance to be sure it doesn't come off accidentally.

 

[diggles]

Man, you have a point there. I just finished sending a 35XL to Arca for a remount, and I was planning on doing the same for a 72L, I'm not even sure I will find that particular focal length useful but since the 60XL is so hard to find (that particular focal length coincides with one of the most-used equivalent focal lengths on my GFX) I don't seem to have a lot of options in that range. Maybe I should start doing my homework properly

There are a lot of people who like the 72L, but if you don't fine you use it enough let me know because that is one I have been looking for

 

[John Leathwick]

Now that I've got a longer bellows extension (post above), I've been able to more fully explore the closeup performance of the Mamiya RZ Macro 140mm M/L-A that I purchased for US$200. This has to be some of the best money that I've spent on a legacy lens, its manually adjusted floating element allowing top quality performance over a wide range of magnifications. And as Warren commented in his post on the Nikkor 200/8, the rendering of some of these older lenses is beautiful, particularly in their transition to out of focus areas. The image below was shot at a taking scale of around 0.3x , with ten images focus stacked in Zerene Stacker. I've included a central clip at a higher magnification to show the rendering of detail fine enough to allow the legs on the small insect at the base of the flower to be easily distinguished.

-John

 

[rdeloe]

Another nice "bang for the buck" option in the ~100mm focal length range is the Schneider-Kreuznach APO-Symmar 100mm f/5.6. These are 6 element, 4 group lenses from the early 1990s. If you shop carefully, you can get an APO-Symmar 100/5.6 for under the arbitrary $500 USD or EUR 500 that is the threshold for lenses in this thread.

There's a whole lineup of APO-Symmar lenses, from 100mm to 480mm. Some are for large format film, but the 100/5.6 was made for 6x9 film. I consider this a plus because the smaller image circle of a 6x9 lens creates fewer issues, like unwanted stray light, than lenses with image circles for larger formats. The original APO-Symmar line was replaced by the APO-Symmar L line, which was a redesign; apparently this was motivated in part by issues relating to the glass needed for APO-Symmar lenses. I've read from an authoritative source that the Symmar lenses started with the Componon design, and the APO-Symmar (not the L versions) started with the Componon-S design. The lens block diagrams for the APO-Symmar 100/5.6 and the Componon-S 100/5.6 certainly show a strong family resemblence.

I bought an APO-Symmar 100/5.6 because I was impressed by its immediate predecessor, the Symmar-S 100mm f/5.6. I needed a Compur 0 shutter for my APO-Digitar 35mm f/4.6 L-88 cells, and found one in nice condition that had Symmar-S 100mm cells with what the seller described as haze in the front cells. The cells were heading for the bin, but on a whim I tried them out. Very impressive performance. That got me looking at the improved APO-Symmar 100/5.6, and Warren @diggles sealed the deal by sharing some images he made with his APO-Symmar 100/5.6 that looked really good.

Long story short, even in the short time I've had the APO-Symmar 100/5.6 I have been impressed. The APO designation is not just marketing; it really does do well in situations where other lenses have nasty purple fringing. I shot it side-by-side with the Symmar-S cells this evening, and it is a nice step up. It's sharper -- not dramatically, but enough to notice. Contrast is much improved, especially on large shifts.

Both the Symmar-S and the APO-Symmar lenses can shift 25mm in landscape and give good image quality at the far edge. The APO-Symmar is better than the Symmar-S with a 25mm shift on my GFX 100S, which is not surprising because the angle of view was increased from 60 degrees for the Symmar-S to 72 degrees in the APO-Symmar.

Some other nice features of the APO-Symmar 100/5.6 are that it's almost entirely free of distortion within the image circle I can use; this is not surprising given that it seems to be a modified enlarger lens design. Light falloff is moderate; image quality is crisp and clean right across the circle within which I can shift in landscape (100mm); and on my F-Universalis, mounted on a flat board, there is no need to recompose when tilting and swinging. This last feature is a very nice bonus.

If you see value in studying MTF charts, here's the APO-Symmar 100/5.6, compared to the APO-Digitar 100/5.6. Look what the sagittal (radial) and tangential lines for 20 lp/mm at f/11 are doing in each chart (green arrows). On the APO-Symmar, sag and tan travel together on either side of 80% contrast right across the 33mm x 44mm image circle, and stay strong within the image circle that gives 25mm of shift in landscape on that sensor (which is at around the 55% position on the X-axis for the APO-Symmar 100/5.6). For the APO-Digitar at f/11, the sag and tan lines are just a smidgen higher on the Y-axis; they also stay strong within the image circle of the lens at the distance shown (which is not infinity for the Digitar). Not in debate here is that the Digitar is the better lens... but the APO-Symmar looks good too. The evaluation images I've been making suggest it's a good performer on my GFX 100S setup. The small size and consistent good performance at f/8 are a win.



I think I'm going to enjoy using this lens. And yes, I already had a perfectly good lens in this focal length range! The business case for the APO-Symmar 100/5.6 was not strong. But I'm not sorry! The Fujinon EX 105mm f/5.6 I used to start this thread holds its own against the APO-Symmar 100/5.6. On that note, the Schneider-Kreuznach is possibly a very tiny bit sharper than the Fujinon EX 105/5.6 (but it could be exactly as sharp -- it's that close). The Fuji lens is lower contrast, but not by enough to worry about. And the Fuji isn't as well corrected for purple fringing (but it's fixable). The Fuji does shift the same 25mm, and does just as well in the outer reaches of its image circle. Because of the way the Fuji mounts compared to the Schneider on my F-Universalis, tilt and swing can require a lot of correction (but this is a minor issue). All in all, they're both good choices -- lots of bang for the buck.

 

[John Leathwick]

Earlier in this thread I described my experience with a Fujinon A 180mm F/9 that I bought to become part of a set of lightweight back-packing lenses to use with my GFX and Universalis. While I have found it to be a great performer at closer distances, I had frequent experiences of soft performance at infinity that made me question the wisdom of keeping it. I even considered doing a return to the seller, but had just enough in the way of positive results to keep searching for how to make it perform. Yesterday I took some landscape images that were very soft, and I decided to put in some time in to find out what makes it work. In particular, I backed off my focus peaking setting, focused in on the finest distant detail I could find, and kept shooting and re-shooting to no avail. From looking at multiple 'failures' I gradually realised that it was consistently focusing closer than it should be, and so I tried stepping the focus back towards infinity by progressively reducing the lens extension. Some of these stepped images made it very clear that the lens was more than capable of capturing fine detail at infinity, but I was puzzled at how to achieve this consistently, given that my strategy of focus at full aperture, stop down and shoot was clearly not working.

A little nocturnal reflection (I won't reveal the hour) solved the problem - focus shift on stopping down! This morning I set up on a distant scene, and for my first image, focused wide open (f/9) on the finest distant detail I could find, stopped down to F/12.5 and shot a frame. I then refocused as best I could with the lens stopped down, and took a second image. A side by side comparison in Lightroom at 100% magnification revealed a marked difference as shown below. I've since repeated the experiment with a number of scenes and different lighting conditions, and the results are highly repeatable with a clear message - if you want to use this lens at infinity, it must be focused with the lens stopped down, as the focus shift, even with a change from f/9 to f/12.5, is sufficient to significantly degrade infinity performance, more so than I've ever encountered in any other lens. Notice also the smoking gun of improved sharpness in the foreground foliage in the 'focused then stopped down' image (left). I've also included the full stopped down then focused' image after sharpening with Jeff Schewe's progressive sharpening routine in Photoshop. This is overkill for an image of these dimensions but demonstrates the detail captured by this diminutive lens.

-John

 

[rdeloe]

The difference between those two approaches to focusing is not small! Good on you for sticking with it to find how to get best performance.

 

[rdeloe]

I needed to know if I can shift the APO-Symmar 100/5.6 25mm and get good results. I sure can. Image quality stays strong right to the edges of the 25mm shift (100mm image circle needed). Light falloff is manageable with 25mm shifts, and there are no unpleasant aberrations to deal with. This is excellent performance for a light, tiny lens that can be had for less than $500 USD.



At centre there's plenty of fine detail in this 100% view of the unmodified, straight out of camera JPEG. (Yes, JPEG. Sigh. For the first time in years I somehow set the camera to JPEG only and didn't notice.)



It's still going strong right out to the edges in this 100% view of the straight out of camera, unmodified (except for stitching) JPEG.

 

[diggles]

Since the Nikkor M 200 is such a great performer on the Hasselblad 100C, I wanted to try some more of the Nikkor large format lenses to see how they perform. This image was made with the Nikkor W 150mm f/5.6 S and 30mm of camera fall using the Rm3di and a DIY mount. It looks really good. At 6000px it competes with the APO Digitar 150n, but at full resolution the Digitar is sharper. The Digitar doesn't have that kind of image circle though and can't manage that much shift. At less than $500 the Nikkor W 150mm f/5.6 S is definitely a great bang for your buck lens.

Nikkor W 150mm f/5.6 S by Warren Diggles, on Flickr

 

[rdeloe]

That Nikkor looks great Warren. Very clean and plenty sharp.

I was pushing my APO-Symmar 100/5.6 today to see what it can do. This is 30mm of rise. I don't have any other lenses that can do 30mm even if their image circle allows because they hit the limit imposed by the sensor cavity. The record previously was around 26mm. The shape and position of the APO-Symmar 100/5.6 at this distance seems to work better. The edge of hard vignetting is just barely starting to show up at 30mm. I didn't even bother fixing it here.

The Basilica of Our Lady in Guelph is looking fine in the afternoon spring sun.

 

[John Leathwick]

Two great images above - so much for the view that only digital-specific lenses will work well on digital backs! I followed the link to Flickr and checked yours out full size, Warren - impressive optics, but also lovely subtlety in your processing of tones.

-John

 

[Paul Spinnler]

All last-gen analogue lenses beyond 100mm are good, according to my experience on the Arca F metric, especially multicoated LF plasmats from RS/SK (vs. for example more complex tele designs). So all Symmars, Sironar lenses will perform well.

Besides the Symmars from SK, the Sironars from RS beyond 100mm should provide excellent results.

I would even go as far as to say that a Sironar-N (non red-ring) 100 should provide similarly great performance. You can buy these for 200 bucks.

So the ultimate question to answer is whether one can identify the generation of plasmats that still is great on digital and I have a gut feeling that on a case-by-case basis also the gen before the last-gen of the analogue era in the segment 100mm+ should do fine. Below 100mm the Grandagon 65 is also great.

To summarize - if anyone has a Sironar-N 100, 150, 210 -> would be cool to see. And then as a comparison Sironar-S vs. last-gen SK symmars.

It is not unlikely in my view that the 200 buck Sironar N is not too far apart from the 450 buck Symmar, to be validated ofc.

That then would be a real bang for your buck.

 

[rdeloe]

I don't know about the Sironar-N 100 because I haven't tried one. But as I noted earlier in the thread, I was surprised to see how well the Symmar-S 100/5.6 did. The APO-Symmar 100/5.6 is better, but the Symmar-S held its own.

It would be interesting to know if the Grandagon 65 was a good performer. I tried a Nikkor-SW 65 and found it unsatisfactory. I could not get edges in focus when the centre was in focus, at any distance.

 

[daz7]

I've tried Sironar N, Sironar S and Rodenstock Digital all in the same focal length (150mm) and the digital version was the best one, closely followed by the S flavour with N having worst contrast and sharpness of the three. Still, the N version is quite usable although a bit low on contrast.
Rodenstock Digital 150mm impressed me - it is very similar to Rodenstock S (I think they used the apo S type to ajust it and make a digital version) and gives outstanding performance considering its price. Its image circle is large enough to cover 4x5 at f11.

 

[John Leathwick]

I don't know about the Sironar-N 100 because I haven't tried one. But as I noted earlier in the thread, I was surprised to see how well the Symmar-S 100/5.6 did. The APO-Symmar 100/5.6 is better, but the Symmar-S held its own.

It would be interesting to know if the Grandagon 65 was a good performer. I tried a Nikkor-SW 65 and found it unsatisfactory. I could not get edges in focus when the centre was in focus, at any distance.

Rob, I wonder if the experience that you've gained in improving the performance of your Apo-Digitar 35mm by using shims to adjust the distance between the front and rear cells might have also helped resolved the issue that you had with the Nikkor-SW 65 that you tried and found wanting?

-John

 

[rdeloe]

Rob, I wonder if the experience that you've gained in improving the performance of your Apo-Digitar 35mm by using shims to adjust the distance between the front and rear cells might have also helped resolved the issue that you had with the Nikkor-SW 65 that you tried and found wanting?

-John

That's a great question. I don't have it anymore to check, but I'm inclined to think not. The reason is with the other lenses that needed cell spacing adjustment, it was not possible to get sharp focus at all on the edges. Image quality was bad no matter where I focused. However, with this 65mm I could get sharp edges, or sharp centre, but not both at the same time until f/11 and smaller.

 

[jng]

That's a great question. I don't have it anymore to check, but I'm inclined to think not. The reason is with the other lenses that needed cell spacing adjustment, it was not possible to get sharp focus at all on the edges. Image quality was bad no matter where I focused. However, with this 65mm I could get sharp edges, or sharp centre, but not both at the same time until f/11 and smaller.

Granted, too late now since you've moved the lens on, but this sounds like possible field curvature? My understanding is that proper shimming can help mitigate such effects, so shimming *might* have worked after all. My SK 60XL was just a bit soft at the edges when shifted, and this cleaned up nicely when I inserted a shim between the Copal and the front lens cell group.

John

 

[rdeloe]

Granted, too late now since you've moved the lens on, but this sounds like possible field curvature? My understanding is that proper shimming can help mitigate such effects, so shimming *might* have worked after all. My SK 60XL was just a bit soft at the edges when shifted, and this cleaned up nicely when I inserted a shim between the Copal and the front lens cell group.

John

For sure. It's uncharted territory. For all I know a slight tweaking to the spacing might have sorted it out.

Edit: This discussion motivated me to go back to the files I had saved when evaluating the lens. Where it was in focus, it was really good -- clean, crisp and sharp. There's definitely strong field curvature, but maybe John (@jng) is right and it could have been sorted out with a spacing adjustment.