Enlarger Taking Lens Survey (ETLS.22)

[16:9]

I'm preparing an enlarger lens group test using D800E and D7100 bodies - ranging from the cheap to the exotic, and from macro to infinity. If anyone would like to join in and/or lend equipment or suggestions for inclusion, please let me know.

I'm only interested in their performance as 'taking' lenses, and will be looking hard at flare resistance, bokeh, drawing style and resolution. Previously my tests have been informal and practically-oriented, but I'm equally interested in lenses' technical and aesthetic qualities and will not be above shooting charts as well as gonzo.

However, I'm short of an APO EL Nikkor 105 and would like to throw into the mix an Orthoplanar or other funky forum favourites. I'd be equally happy to buy or borrow them, or meet up for a test somewhere in the UK.

EDIT: Final Shortlist, by rounds . . .

Round 1: Old v New
Durst Schneider (round aperture) 100/5.6 v Componon S 100/5.6 v Nikkor 100/5.6 (metal body) v Nikkor 100/5.6 N

Round 2: 75-80mm Group
Minolta E 75 v CE 80 v Neonon 80 v Meogon 80/2.8 v Ektar 75

Round 3: 100-105mm Non-Apo
Ektar 100 v Fujinon EX 105/5.6 v Rodagon 105/5.6 v Schneider 100/5.6 from Round 1 v Nikkor EL 105/5.6 from Round 1

Round 4: Apo and Specialist
Focotar II v Apo Rodagon 105/4 v Apo Componon 90/4.5 v APO EL 105 (if available) v Orthoplanar (if available)

Round 5: Finals
Multiple distance tests. Imatest results. Overall winner(s) and merit awards.

Benchmark lenses for comparison: Nikon 85G (infinity), Sigma 150 Apo (1:2 > 1m), Printing Nikkor 105/150 (1:1)

[16:9]

Printing Nikkors and other rarities now in place - I just need a Componon HM and APO EL 105/5.6 Nikkor. The Nikkor seems to be vanishingly thin on the ground - no members have one gathering dust in the cupboard? Or up for a meeting?

[kds315*]

Save your time, that has all been done multiple times, including the "exotic ones"

Mark Goodman has done and does an excellent job: http://coinimaging.com/Lens_tests.html

Our member Ray Parkhurst has done similar and is a wealth of information, you may find him here:
http://forum.mflenses.com/exotic-lenses-for-sale-t65026.html and some tests he made here:
http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20173

And yes, I have all those "odd lenses" http://www.macrolenses.de/

[16:9]

There have been some useful reviews in the past, from Ctein on. However . . .

1) None have addressed all aspects of typical use - how they compare at longer working distances, coma, light stars, bokeh, flare, etc.

2) None have focused on their behaviour as tilt lenses for wider application in product photography, flowers, insects, etc

3) Mark Goodmans thorough tests were all conducted on a 10MP Nikon D200 and are, er . . . 'coincentric'. He's shooting circular objects. In other words, we barely get into Zone B, let alone see what shocks and treats like in the corners of a 36MP sensor, or when tilted. Similarly, current NEX sensors are making visible distinctions between good and very good glass that were not previously evident. It's about time for an update.

4) I'm not aware of many wide-ranging group tests comparing cheap and expensive enlarger lenses as taking lenses - or placing these in the context of rare/high-end glass like the Focotar II or APO EL/Printing Nikkors.

5) We now have the capability to use an array of lenses on inexpensive, portable tilt/shift adaptors - and good enlarger lenses are cheaper than ever.

I've exchanged messages with Ray in connection with his Printing Nikkor adaptors: what we're doing will be very complementary to his work.

[kds315*]

Great then and good luck! You know, any test is first a test of the tester

[16:9]

Initially I just wanted answers to questions like: “OK, I see ten tempting £20-40 enlarger lenses on eBay: which is the one to buy?”. There's a general groundswell of 'Oh, they're all good”, but not even MTF data for most. Is a Minolta E 75mm better or worse than the Nikkor version? What do the corners look like at f4 on a D800E or A7R? How much better is the APO than the non-Apo Rodagon? Where do you go to pixel peep samples shot side-by-side? Uh . . .

Mike has pretty much single-handedly shown with a series of images what the Printing Nikkors can do and that's great: I bought two within days of seeing his images.

If you look at the 12 years of gonzo reviews of 'alternative' lenses I've written, you'll see that I tend to favour a real-world approach rather then shooting charts, which rarely tell me more than a quarter of what I need to know about a lens in order to use it in the field. Having said that, a thorough approach to real-world subjects is often surprisingly revealing of a lens' character and failings: you can see the wider Distagons' Zone B dip shooting in the back garden . . .

And we've done a tiny amount of news-breaking ourselves: we were the first to show the advantages of using the Zeiss 21mm on the first full frame sensors - very much against the headwind. The value of that lens tripled in the 12 months following our review. We also did as much as anyone to demonstrate the superiority of the Pentax FA35 and Mamiya 645 macro lenses. And for some time Nikon in Japan showed VIP factory tour guests a printout of our initial testing of the Nikon 14-24mm - for which we built the world's first G > EOS adaptor.

I'm working on a low-cost tilt adaptor that will place in my hands all the flexibility and optical excellence of a £1K Canikon short tele tilt/shift at less than a quarter of the price and weight. In fact, I have the adaptor - I just don't have the ideal lens. So this round of articles is more X-Factor audition than serious business . . . a bit like the 24mm World Cup from back in the noughties.

[iangreenhalgh1]

If you want to show how well these lenses wok for general out-and-about shooting, then take them out and shoot them, it will be far more useful and informative than a boring technical test.

I have a few enlarger lenses that I have mounted in shutters for use on 6x9, they all shoot well at distance and closeup, they include :

Osawa Tominon EL 4/60
Rodenstock Magnagon 5.6/75
Minolta CE-Rokkor 5.6/80
Schneider Componon 5.6/80
Schneider Componon-S 5.6/100
Schneider Componon-S 5.6/135
Kodak Enlarging Ektar 4.5/100
TT&H Ental 4.5/127

It really doesn't matter about tiny details, all that matters is are the lenses capable of doing the job.

[ZoneV]

Oh, I would like to see such a test!
The Apo Componons are lenses I am interested to see in comparison to the "Apo" Rodagon lenses.
The WA Componons could be interesting too!

[16:9]

[16:9]

[16:9]

[ForenSeil]

The Apo-El 105 is one of my wet dreams ^^

My personal favourite of enlarger lenses was (next to Focotar-II 50, Nikon 63 and Noritsu 50.7) the very unexotic Rodagon 105/5.6@F8. Do you already have it on your list? I found it to be better than other most other enlarger lenses I had (including many other 6-element enlarger lenses by Schneider, Rodenstock, Lomo, Meopta and others).
Colors are not well balanced and bokeh is busy but edge-to-edge resolution and sharpness as taking lenses were simply awesome, always yiedling in finest pixel peeping adventures on 16MP APS-C and 24MP FF; should be even more fun on your D800E! It can be also used perfectly well to digitalize negatives and slides with APS-C cameras as it's (unlike most of my other el-lenses) quite nice corrected until 1:1,5-1:2, there it's only very slightly inferior (almost indistinguishable) to Apo-Rodagon-D 75/4.

I would recommend to use all enlarger lenses with hoods if possible (most incl. the Rodagon have 40.5mm filter thread);

PS: I found that my Asahi M42 bellows is producing a tad different (inferior) colors than my high quality Canon (FD) bellows and my Revue M42 bellows (Canon and Revue both almost indistinguishable). I suspect that the "black" inside the Asahi bellows isn't perfectly black (anymore). Be sure to use a good, reliable bellows without light leaks etc.!

PPS: Size of JPEG files could be used as testing category within a focal lenth or magnification ratio; the more details a lens catches, the larger the files are. That's perfectly objective measurement of microcontrast and resolution as long as the light, magnfication ratio etc. stays the same.

PPPS: I heard that the Meopta 75(or 80?) is another secret tip, better than Rodagon and Componon 80; Not sure if it's true

I have 1-3 cheaper enlarger lenses (like Vega 105, Rodenstock Trinar 75,...) I could borrow or sell you for postage/cheap if you're interested; but I can already say (or show with samples) that they are visibly inferior to lenses like the Rodagon 105 in technical aspects.
(Rodagon 105: https://www.flickr.com/photos/54671350@N02/12442776273/sizes/k/in/photostream/ - Vega 105: https://www.flickr.com/photos/54671350@N02/12443126114/sizes/k/in/photostream/ )
The Trinar is inferior aswell of course, but stopped down better than I would expect from a triplet.

[Ray Parkhurst]

The scope of testing sounds very ambitious, and will indeed be complementary to my testing. Most all I've done has been at macro range suitable for coin photography (1:5...5:1). Indeed coins, being generally round objects, are the perfect subjects for photography and lend themselves to getting the very best from a lens. That said, Mark G's tests don't stop at the edge of the coin, but do extend to the corners of the sensor, though he does use APS-C so this is inherently limiting. Still, it's shocking to me how poorly many lenses he has tested have done for field flatness even across the crop sensor image circle.

One caveat to keep in mind...the scope of tests you're contemplating doesn't lend itself well to duplicating lenses such as the Printing-Nikkors, as they were optimized for a fairly narrow range of magnification, which is why they do so well for coins. The 105PN does well only from 1:2...2:1, which is pretty much the "no man's land" of enlarging lenses, which are generally optimized from 1:X...1:2. Enlarging lenses can work from 2:1 and higher in reverse, but from my tests few if any do particularly well in this range compared with optimized optics such as microscope objectives. Repro/Duplication lenses such as the 105PN, the 75ARD1, 74SP, etc which are 1:1 optimized are meant to fill in the gap from 1:2...2:1, and this narrow optimization range results in poorer performance (usually for field flatness) outside this range. Bottom line...my recommendation is to split the scope of your testing to keep within the ranges of the optics under test. It will do no good to test a 105PN at infinity, nor a 105AEL at 1:1. On the other hand, a shootout of various enlarging lenses, designed for 1:X...1:2 (where X is large), as taking lenses for a range of sub-macro magnifications, would be very instructive.

I'd contribute with a loaner, but I recently sold all three of my 105mm Apo-EL-Nikkors. I had an early one and two later "A" version examples. Mark G tested my early one, and it did very well quantitatively. But although I have an extensive "collection" of lenses, I am not a collector, and I realized I would never use the 105AELs on a regular basis, so I decided to part with them. They were just too exotic to do anything but sit on my shelf, perhaps occasionally starring in a lens shootout, and that didn't sit well with me. The early version and one of the A versions went to collectors, and the other A version went to a fairly famous photographer in the PNW who is using it for large format printing.

By the way, I am with Ian on the recommendation of 75mm Magnagon and the 100mm Kodak.

Ray

[16:9]

Thanks all for input.

So often when we put the reputation of a lens under real-world scrutiny, things don't pan out the way the manufacturer's data indicates! Mark G's tests are one of the most valuable online resources in evaluating these lenses but - as you said - because coins are the ideal subjects for photography (being image-circle shaped!) they make the worst subject for a test.

Similarly, true macro applications are a rather specialised microcosm - within which lenses like the Printing Nikkor reign, but outside of which have little 'currency'. So many puns, so little time . . .

The utility of the PN105 is to provide a benchmark against which to assess enlarger lenses outside their comfort zone. One of the less helpful pieces of received wisdom is that enlarger lenses only work in a particular range. Which is why I want to compare them at long range/infinity, at 1m working distances, and at 1:2 and 1:1 on a D7100 for Zone A and B performance, and on a D800E for Zone C. Rather a lot of 'proper' macro testing already been done. No need to reinvent the wheel. I leave the experts to their focus stacks and spider eyes . . .

If a lens get a couple of votes, I'll try to include it. The current list is as follows:

Rodagon 105/5.6
Apo Rodagon 105/4 N
Componon 100/5.6
Apo Componon 90/4.5
Durst/Schneider Componon 100/5.6
Focotar II 100/5.6
Nikkor 80/4 N
Nikkor 100/5.6 (old and new)
Minolta E 75/4.5
Minolta CE 80/5.6
Fujinon EX 105 /5.6
Meogon 80/2.8
APO EL Nikkor 100**
Travegar 100/3.3**
**TBA

I want to leave the door open for a few interesting oddballs. the Ektar looks like a winner. Any other suggestions welcome . . .

However, ultimately, I don't want to waste time testing lenses clearly indicated by MTF to be inferior to their brethren: so no other Rodagons, Componons or Nikkors will make the shortlist. I'd like to see how the Minoltas compare, and whether the later Nikkors and Schneiders made much progress over the earlier ones.

Against the shortlist, I'll be using three benchmark lenses in their range: the Printing Nikkor 105 for 1:1 (maybe also the 150/2.8 ), the Sigma 150 Apo for 2:1 > 1m working distance; and the Nikon 85G for infinity.

I am conscious that by most definitions these lenses are all 'good enough': I've used an Apo 105/4N for product photography for years. However, with each generation of DSLR, 'good enough' is redefined by increasingly high resolution sensors, so I'm letting them decide: most will not fully resolve the D7100 and D800E at all apertures and in all zones. Not all are aberration-free. Sometimes, that doesn't even matter, but when it does . . .

[16:9]

Hmmm. The Enlarging Ektars look interesting: is the 100mm the one to track down - not the 75mm or 135mm?

Similarly, does anyone have information regarding comparing the Fujinon EX 75mm and 105mm? I've read that the fancy air-spaced design isn't necessarily better - although it better fits the FR requirement.

[ZoneV]

Do you perform the test with parallel setup with an other device as the tilted images?
The parallel should be very exact parallel, not sure wheter a tilt device is that good.

[16:9]

The tilt adaptor I'm using enables precisely parallel operation. However, for the un-tilted sections of the test, I'll be using fixed-plane bellows and helicoids.

Because I'm more interested in focal plane control, I'm not paying special attention to field flatness. In fact, I'll be focus bracketing on the assumption that they are not flat - choosing the best sample from each zone. With a parallel setup, it will become obvious if there are major deviations, but I'll be working around those.

As I said, copy and macro work and not the intended objective of these tests. As others have said, we already have quite a few good tests demonstrating how these lenses work on 'home territory'. Outside the image circle, outside their comfort zone, we're taking them places they weren't meant to go, and loving it!

[Ray Parkhurst]

[16:9]

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[iangreenhalgh1]

[Arkku]

I vote for the inclusion of any Fujinon in the test. =)

[16:9]

I aim to please: bought a Fujinon EX 105 and Ektar 75 in the past few hours for inclusion.

[iangreenhalgh1]

[MacTak]

I am very much looking forward to this test, which sounds great--I've over the last couple of years gotten interested in enlarger lenses as taking lenses too. One thing you might consider is adding a 135mm enlarger for comparison (the newer El-Nikkor I have is M39). Might I make a couple of other suggestions for cheap oddballs that have some reputation of quality. First the Amar-s 105mm (which several users here have had great success with as a taking lens; see here:http://forum.mflenses.com/amar-s-4-5-105mm-made-in-poland-my-new-105-tele-t37668.html); second the Durst Neonon (comes in 80 and 105 for your purposes), for which there are rumours it was made by Pentax (but others say Schneider, etc.). There is also Omicron-EL, which some had claimed was really an El-Nikkor (someone's tests suggested against this) and even Hoya Super EL if you want to try some other cheap 6-element lenses in this range.

I agree about lens hoods, but some consideration of how the lenses handle light/flare might be a good idea, as some of these lenses don't use very good coating given their intended purpose. That's why I like the El-Nikkor-N lenses, their multi-coating is excellent for fieldwork.