300mm lens comparison on x-ray film

[Ian Grant]

I agree, very odd indeed. The coating on my 300/4.5 Xenar looks factory fresh.

Ian, please share some pictures made with your version of this same lens. Let’s see the results you’ve got. Thanks.

I will, maybe a landscape, though.

Ian

 

[Ian Grant]

According to Hartmut Thiele's _Großes Fabikationsbuch Schneider-Kreuznach Band II_, 300 mm Xenar s/n 4445979 is one of a batch of 19 with a date of 7 November 1955.

Wanting to get some sense of when Schneider stopped marking their coated lenses with a red triangle I took a look at today's ebay listings of the Angulon (because there are always a lot of this particular Schneider lens on ebay.)
The highest serial number with the triangle was 4352603; its batch of 240 is dated 5 September 1955. The lowest serial number without the red triangle is 4475083, one of a batch of 203 with a build date of 1 December 1955.

So I think we can say this 300 mm Xenar is coated and made right around the time that Schneider stopped marking coated lenses with a red triangle.

David

Well you didn't spot the White Triangle coated 90mm f6.8 Angulon, with a 1949 serial number I have an older Uncoated pre WWII 90mm Angulon.

Schneider reformulated their lenses in the very early 1950s as they switched optical glass from CZ Abbe in East Germany, to Pilkington in the UK.

Ian

 

[Soulstar89]

I wanted to test some expired (6 years) x-ray film and thought it would be a good opportunity to test two different 300mm lenses at the same time. My previous test with this film was very underexposed when using an LED panel and a portable strobe. This time I used daylight on a cloudy day, the results are much better. Something I dislike in close-up head shots is an extremely shallow depth of field where the eyes are sharp but the nose is a blurry blob. For that reason I stopped the lenses down to bring the nose more into focus but not completely. The light level changed slightly between the shots and that's why the apertures used are not the same. I spot metered from a grey card and exposed for that. The sky isn't blown out on either shot. The distance from the camera to the head didn't change between shots but I noticed there was a change in size on the ground glass when I changed lenses. For this test I wanted to find the optimum ISO and dev time which is why there is a 1 minute difference in dev time between the shots. Despite shot 2 having 1 minute extra dev time the contrast is lower. I scanned both of these using the black and white points of the histogram and applied the exact same contrast adjustment in Lightroom before exporting them 2-up.

I'm sharing this for anyone interested. I enjoy researching about how different lenses perform but something I find frustrating is endless words and discussion on forums without pictures to illustrate. Without seeing this side by side test I would never have guessed there would be much of a difference. I know which lens I could happily let go.

Camera: 10x8 Tachihara / Film: Fuji 100 NIF / Film size: 18x24cm / ISO 100 / Dev: Rodinal 1+50
SHOT 1 Lens: 300mm f/4.2 Plaubel Anticomar @ f8.5 (front swing)
SHOT 2 LENS: 300 f/4.5 Schneider Xenar @ f8 (front swing)

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Nas I was just looking at the Schneider 360mm xenar f4.5. I would prefer to have a 300mm tbh. Thanks for this post.

Next time you have your large format out and do this kind of test, try focusing on the eyes then tilt to chin. As it’s rather close it may be focus to chin the tilt to eyes. You may see a big difference in what is in focus.

I think I may invest in a head like yours.

 

[Nas]

Nas I was just looking at the Schneider 360mm xenar f4.5. I would prefer to have a 300mm tbh. Thanks for this post.

You don't fancy 360mm like Richard Avedon used?

 

[Ian Grant]

I might try my 360mm f5.5 Tele-Xenar for 7x5 portraits, it looks like it would give a 2.3 portrait at 10ft.

Ian