[Leica] Re:OT enlarging lenses

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

At 12:11 PM -0800 11/11/05, Richard wrote:
>It appears the choice is down to Rodagon APO 50/2.8 for $199 or a 
>Focotar 50/4.5 (original) for ~$120-$150. I am leaning toward the 
>Rodagon in the same vein that while 99% of my photos are crap, the 
>remaining 1% deserves the very best lens I can afford...

The 'original' Focotar came in two distinct flavours. I'm probably 
not quite right in this, but don't feel like standing up and going to 
the bookshelf for the real deal...  The first was a Schneider design, 
the second a Leitz design. I have the second one, the one before the 
Focotar-2. When the Focotar-2 came out, I went down to my local, 
borrowed two samples and brought them home to try against my older 
one. Mostly, it was a wash. The only difference I could see at any 
aperture and magnification was at f/4.5 and f/5.6, where the older 
one had less vignetting due to larger front and rear elements. It's 
essentially an f/2.8 lens that has been throttled down. In fact, it 
had better evenness of illumination than a Rodenstock Rodagon 50/2.8 
and Nikkor 50/2.8 that I tried at the same time, all at f/5.6. This 
was, I believe, in the 70's, so there have been advances in the 
Rodenstocks and Nikkors since then. In any case, I found the older 
Focotar to be the equal of the Focotar-2's, and better than the other 
brands, so I still have the Focotar 'late-original' from about 1958. 
The 40/2.8 (at least the one I had) is not nearly as good, but does 
work reasonably well on the V-35 system. Stay away from 'wideangle' 
enlarging lenses unless you _really_ need them when using regular 
enlargers.

All this does not, of course, mean all that much in relation to the 
samples you might find. :-)

As Frank wrote, a recent APO-Rodagon or Componon-HM is probably a wise 
choice.

-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
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