I was thinking of getting a 270mm or 300mm lens for 4x5 and want to avoid the ex pense and weight of the F5.6 lenses. The Schnieder G-Clarons looked liked the t icket, but them I read that they are not multi-coated. Is this a concern for ge neral landscape photography?
THX in advance
Todd
They are definitely not multi-coated. I called Schneider about a year ago when I was considering purchasing one of the lenses and they confirmed that they are not multi-coated.
"Is this a concern for general landscape photography?"
From my (limited) LF experience, no.
On the one hand, I think that multi-coating is one of the greatest advance in lens technology in the second half of the 20th century. On the other hand, many great photographs were made before its advent. For example, Schneider first used it on large format lenses in 1977 (http://www.schneideroptics.com/faq/faqlarge.htm). How many of us will equal the photographs of Edward Weston? Yet we would probably despise his lenses.
With only single coating, there will be increased flare and a small reduction in contrast, esp. in the shadows. In most cases, you probably won't notice the difference. Using a lens shade would help (how many of us bother?).
If your goal is a light-weight lens of about 300 mm for 4x5 for distant subjects, then you might want to consider the Nikkor-M 300 mm or the Fuji-C 300 mm. Both are multicoated. The Nikkor-M seems to be more popular, but that might be because Fuji LF lenses aren't as available in the US.
Also see "Specific lenses: long for 4x5" on the Large Format Photography Home Page, http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~qtluong/photography/lf/
As for Schneider lenses, I had the same question about 2-3 years ago. So, I called and spoke to one of their LF people. The person with whom I spoke gave the following response:
o Schneider multi-coating doesn't provide that much additional protection against flare -- about 2%-4%. The primary benefit of their multi-coating is that it provides infra-red and UV filtration. o Assuming typical lighting at the time of exposure, they indicated that one probably couldn't tell a difference, except perhaps by examining the chroma of a print made from each lens type with a loupe. o One can always obtain UV filtration by using a B+W UV filter. (e.g. high altitudes.)
I really doubt if it makes much difference. On the basis of this discussion, I chose Schneider single-coated lenses (Symmar-S), and I've always been pleased with the results. If you were planning on taking a lot of pictures into the sun, you might get better contrast with multi-coated lenses. For infra-red photography, it would seem like single-coated lenses could actually be better, since they would presumably pass more light. But, I've never done this kind of photography.
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