Are "cherry-picked" Linhof lenses a myth?

I've read quite a few times the assertion that lenses labelled "Linhof" or "Sinar" were better than the regular versions, since they had been specially selected by the respective companies and represented the cream of the crop. I recently bought the Schneider production list books that Hartmut Thiele has put together and the data in them tells a different story.

The first thing to note is that lenses weren't being produced in a steady stream like cars, they were assembled in batches with weeks and sometimes months between batches of the same lens. The records show who the lenses were sold to; so a Technika-Symmar is shown separately to a Sinar-Symmar and a regular Symmar even though they were all made on the same day. Sometimes the regular Symmars outnumber the Technika-Symmars, sometimes they don't. And sometimes the entire batch is sold to Linhof (or Sinar) with nothing being produced for sale by Schneider. Even in the mixed batches it might be 50 for Schneider, 25 for Sinar and 25 for Linhof - nice round numbers. I think that the proposition that Linhof (or Sinar) took the best lenses and the ones sold by Schneider were not quite up to that standard is completely incorrect.

Two possibilities spring to mind. One is that Linhof set a standard which all Schneider lenses met, regardless of how they were badged. The other is that Linhof simply decided that Schneider knew what they were doing and just took what they were given. The first scenario would allow the company to state that all Linhof lenses were selected to met their own exacting standards. It might imply that lenses without the Linhof branding don't meet that criteria but it certainly wouldn't say that. It would however give the buyer a reason to pay more for the Linhof version. Basically it would be a marketing ploy.

To be honest, the idea that the QC at Schneider (or Rodenstock) would vary enough that there would be significant numbers of "better" or "worse" lenses seems far-fetched. I'm not saying the odd mistake wouldn't happen, but I seriously doubt that one of the premier lens manufacturers of the sixties would be anything other than utterly exacting with their top of the range lenses.

Bob S. has described a light projection machine that is used to evaluate each lens, and qualitative differences are measurable. Im sure there must have been some sort of minimum standard and hopefully, the companies lived up to their promise to their Linhof and Sinar clients.

There are differences between lenses, all you have to do is try two of the same model lens on a DSLR and you can readily see differences. Large format lenses may be simpler designs than zooms but I bet subtle differences still exist. Large format film enlarged 3x is pretty forgiving compared to a digital file enlarged 20x so testing and getting "the best" is probably less critical than with smaller formats, which are more demanding of their lenses.

I'll pay a little more for a Sinar/Linhof and a little less for a Caltar, although I've never had a dog with any of them.

There were some quality issues at Schneider way back after WWII, some lenses like the Angulons were rather variable in quality.

This was a period when there were also issues with CZJ lenses for Rollei, and probably also Linhof. We now think of the East and West German Zeiss companies as being completely separate after WWII but there was inter trading, lens from Jena being sold by the West until some time in the early 1950's.

So this was the time that Lihnof began selecting & branding Schneider lenses, they worked much more closely with Zeiss (West). At some point Schneider's QC issues were solved and so how much testing etc went on may have varied over time.

Ian

28 years ago I bought a 165 mm Super Angulon from Sinar that was very bad quality.I costed something like four grand. The negatives had low resolution and were soft. I sent it to Sinar and Sinar sent it to Schneider and they said it was "within tolerance". I avoided Schneider after that.

It's not a myth in the sense that at the time of purchase of such a lens when new the buyer could be assured the he or she wasn't getting a dog of a lens. But the wisdom of paying a premium for such a lens 20, 30, 40 years after it left the factory is debatable since age and use would tend to negate the effect of some things Linhof checked and did. I used to know what those things were, I've now forgotten. But if you can dig up the message from Bob Salomon (sp?) mentioned by Frank you can see what Linhof did with these lenses.

Several years back I had the opportunity to test four 210 Angulons, with a USAF test chart and all that. The best two were a late 11,xxx,xxx model and a much older 5,5xx,xxx Linhof branded-sample. Those two were indistinguishable and significantly better than the other two, in the 6-7 million range as I recall. Of course that's a very small sample and maybe not statistically significant, but I was impressed by the older Linhof lens.

One of the main points here is that often *all* of one batch of lenses went to Linhof, there was no left-overs going to Schneider. So if they ordered 150 lenses, Schneider might have junked (or rebuilt) those that failed QC, but I seriously doubt that they made 1500 lenses just so that Linhof could get the best 10% (or 20% etc). Their processes would need to have been reliable enough that almost all of the lenses met the Linhof standard, whether they were badged as Linhof, Sinar, Caltar or plain Schneider.

The volumes going to Linhof were simply too great for Schneider to hold on to large volumes of rejects from Linhof for later use, they would need to get it right the first time. The Linhof QC would be there to prevent any dogs from getting through, but the idea that they were sorting through trays of lenses for the best of the best and rejecting the rest simply isn't supported by the records.

Frank, the Caltars show up for the first time right at the end of the book (4th December 1975) in one big batch. 100 x 65mm, 500 x 90mm, 200 x 135mm, 800 x 150mm, 600 x 210mm, 50 x 240mm, 100 x 300mm & 50 x 360mm. It appears to have taken most of the week as not much else got pushed out during that time, so these would not have been factory seconds. If they lowered the QC requirements then maybe a few more dogs would slip through, but generally they should be just as good as all of the others (as you have experienced).

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Originally Posted by Paul Ewins

Two possibilities spring to mind. One is that Linhof set a standard which all Schneider lenses met, regardless of how they were badged. The other is that Linhof simply decided that Schneider knew what they were doing and just took what they were given.

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Third scenario is that Linhof (and sinar with their DB barrels) bought their cells to have their in-house expert lens mounters mount and collimate them on shutter and board before shipping them to the customer, which sieves out any dogs that skipped the Schneider QC, and avoids the quality issues associated with lens mounting by some camera shop assistant...

I always assumed that Linhof/Sinar were sent batches of lenses, and they checked them and whatever was good enough they kept, hence they got whatever from their batches that was good enough, rather than the pick of the entire Schneider output. I wouldn't expect for a minute that they had some guy from Linhof strutting around the Schneider factory with a monacle and clipboard like some sort of teutonic man-from-delmonte picking all the best gear.