Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 105mm F3.5

[!Karen]

First 5 pictures are wide open

[Pancolart]

Splendid photos, thanks for sharing.

[Olivier]

[Oldhand]

Superb lens - very well handled.
3,4 and 5 are wonderful
OH

[mo]

Lovely photos, I wanted to see what happened next with the Chicken and the cat.

[woodrim]

Nice to see a lens not already covered extensively.

[!Karen]

[Pancolart]

[iangreenhalgh1]

I have this lens in a Compur shutter, it is one of my mainstays for use on 6x9 film, which is it's original purpose. Like all 3.5 tessar types, it's a bit soft wide open but quickly becomes very sharp when stopped down. The softness wide open is not seen as a detriment though but rather as a plus point. The Xenar and Tessar were both made in 3.5, 4.5 and 6.3 versions and the 3.5 was sold as a dual purpose lens - shoot it wide open for portraits where the spherical aberration makes the rendering smooth and soft, use it stopped down as a general-purpose lens. This made the 3.5s hot sellers as the photographer didn't need to buy both a portrait lens and a general purpose lens. Critical sharpness is reached around f6.3, and the 6.3 versions are actually critically sharp even wide open, but they don't appear to have sold in great numbers as they are hard to find today.

Some samples from my Xenar 3.5/105 on 6x9 film:

Shanghai GP3 from a bad batch, one of the few frames that came out okay, f8 I think:



Century Graphic 23, Xenar 3.5/105, ND4 filter. Kodak Industrex MX125 rated at 10 ISO. 4 mins at f22.



Kodak Industrex MX125 x-ray flm:




Ilford FP4 using ND4 filter and exposures around 30 secs:

[!Karen]

I read that it is a large format or an enlarger lens.

To me, mine just looks like a regular M42 lens with focusring / scale etc, it came with an edixa camera


Was it converted?

Great pictures above!

[iangreenhalgh1]

Very interesting, I've never seen one like that before. I'd say that is the original mounting, it has similarities to other Schneider lenses of the 1950s. I didn't know the Xenar 3.5/105 was ever sold for SLR use, but no reason why not as it's clearly very capable in that role.

[mo]

That is one very,very good looking lens,congrats on owning it.

[Olivier]

Ian, you took very nice B&W photographies.

!Karen your lens is beautiful. I like these old designs very much.
The iris is perfectly round with all these blades. How many ? More than 16 ?

The max blades I've seen is on a Taïr-11A 2.8/135 with 20 blades.
16 blades : Taïr-3A, -3S and -3PhS 4.5/300mm ; Jupiter-9 2/85mm ; ; Meyer Optik Görlitz Orestegor 4/200mm ; Carl Zeiss Jena Triotar 4/13,5 T ; Piesker Picon 2.8/135mm ; Steinheil München Culminar 4.5/135mm
15 blades : Meyer Optik Görlitz Trioplan 2.8/100mm

[iangreenhalgh1]

Merci Olivier.

The most blades I've seen has been in old Cooke lenses from the 1910s and 1920s, if I remember rightly one had 22.

[JohnBar]

@Karen

They normally are sold similar to this one which I picked up last month

http://www.ebay.de/itm/Schneider-Kreuznach-Objektiv-Xenar-4-8-180-mm-/281269811401?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEWNX%3AIT&nma=true&si=bg4Ii%252Bo9j%252Bd7ajIbUIljptKbU84%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

First time I have seen one like yours even though the tube will be mostly empty space. Beautiful lens.