Schneider Kreuznach Xenar 5cm f3.5 (Welta folding cam lens)

[SXR_Mark]

This Lens is from Welta Wetli 35mm folding camera.The camera was bought as scrap, with the lens detached. It is a Tessar type lens. If the lens is coated in anyway, it has only a weak single coating. Certainly, pointing the lens towards the sun is a very bad idea as contrast drops dramatically. Glass condition is quite good, better than the picture below would suggest, but there are some slight spots and marks.

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I have three 50mm lens from Welta folders (they can be had for peanuts). The others are a Zeiss Jena f3.5 Tessar and a Steinheil München Cassar f2.9 Triplet. The Schneider is the sharpest wide open. In fact, at normal focus distances, it is very sharp wide open. The Zeiss is noticeably but not excessively soft at f3.5. The Steinheil triplet shows quite a lot of spherical aberration wide open, but is very sharp at f4. I would say it beats the Zeiss Tessar at f4.

Anyway, onto some samples with the Schneider. These were taken with my Oly OM-D E-M5 with the lens mounted on a home made helicoid. I used a small hood and was careful to keep the sun behind me. PP is limited to small curves adjustment and a bit of cropping.

Even at moderately close focus (down to 40cm object to image), sharpness is very good wide open. Colour and rendering are very attractive IMHO. Some samples at f3.5.

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#5 This is at f5.6


Moving to very close focus of ~25cm (object to image), then f3.5 gives a soft and dreamy look. See below
#6


Stopping down to f5.6 brings back very good sharpness whilst the character remains very attractive. Colour saturation does seem to improve a bit when stopping down, but this effect is normalised out by the curves adjustment.

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[Pancolart]

Fine colors, i love the yellow and purple.

[Orio]

Delicious image rendering!!

[SXR_Mark]

@ Pancolart & Orio

Thank you for your kind words.

In a recent article about the Kodak Retina cameras in UK magazine Amateur Photographer, Ivor Matanle wrote that of the Schneider Xenar f3.5 that it is "a better lens in use than the f2.8 Xenar". Does anyone have experience of both lenses? I am certainly impressed by the f3.5. Sometimes tweaking a good design to make it faster can indeed make a less successful overall package.

Mark

[Attila]

Lovely pictures from a good performer, Xenar , Tessar good lenses.

[iangreenhalgh1]

That '3.5 is better than 2.8' in Tessars/Xenars line gets repeated often. I've yet to see any evidence though. Better how? At what aperture setting?

[calvin83]

Lens made around 1938 and should be un-coated.

I have also heard the 3.5 tessars is better than 2.8 tessars. Compare them at wide open is not fair. If both lens designed and produced in the same period, I would expect the 2.8 tessar with have similar performance as the 3.5 tessar start from F4 to F5.6. Anyone want to do some test and confirm this?

[buerokratiehasser]

Have something like this in altix mount
Some homebrewn tele it seems