An unusual Sironar

[Joseph O'Neil]

Joe,

With a 6 2xxx xxx serial number, your lens was made in approximately 1967.

-good stuff snipped-

For the 180mm, this means a single cell focal length of 550mm - which means you're going to need about 21½" of bellows to focus it at infinity. I don't recall the single cell focal length of my 210mm Sironar, but it was somewhere in the 620mm range.

Kerry

Hi Kerry;
I wasn't holding out much hope, I was more or less curious. I likely paid to much for rmy lens ten years ago (about $550 US), but there wasn't much choice locally, and that was before I got onto Ebay (my ebay account is only 9 years old)

As for a 600mm FL lens, I already have an APO - Ronar in that size. Mind you, there seems to be run of those lenses in the buy/sell section. I often wondered if I should assemble a set. But the thought of backpacking with all that heavy glass....

The date of the lens - many thanks. I always wondered for sure. I've used this lens a lot over the years, and never regretted buying it. I like the 180 format because it's jsut different enough from the 210 "standard". The best thing, to me, about the 180mm size is that it's designed to cover 5x7 with movements, so it's really nice to use in the field.

I agree with you - Sironars are a very common lens - a good lens - but not rare. I love my 135mm I bought new. But that's the big point - you can still buy them brand new. I looked up Badger - brand new 180mm Sironar - $1,065. Compared to $885 for the Ebay one, especially for a near 30 year old lens, personally I would go new at that price.

One last thought - pure esthetics here, but i like the Compur shutter on my 180mm better than the Copal pictured on Ebay. Most of my lenses are in Copals, a couple in Ilex, but I just like the Compur. Dunno why, just do. Maybe it "feels" more refined somehow.

joe

[Michael S. Briggs]

....
I agree with you - Sironars are a very common lens - a good lens - but not rare. I love my 135mm I bought new. But that's the big point - you can still buy them brand new. I looked up Badger - brand new 180mm Sironar - $1,065. Compared to $885 for the Ebay one, especially for a near 30 year old lens, personally I would go new at that price.

....

You can't buy this exact lens new, only its descendent. Rodenstock uses the "Sironar" name for their plasmat-type lenses. The plain Sironar was circa 1960s/1970s. The current versions are the Apo-Sironar-S, and in fewer focal lengths, the less expensive Apo-Sironar-N.

All Sironars that I have seen on eBay with the convertabilty feature have been in Copal shutters. It's probably just that the aperture scales on the Copal shutters give more room for the extra numbers. The aperture scale on Compur shutters are smaller and the stops aren't equally spaced so the numbers get crowded at the high f-number end. Or it might be the result of some marketing decision.

But in either case I think it very unlikely that the optical design of convertible and non-convertible Sironars are different. (I mean Sironars and not later lenses that have "Apo" in the name from the factory). So if you have a Sironar without a conversion scale, all that you need to try it as a convertible lens is to remove the rear cell and up the f-number on the scale by 3 stops. So f5.6 becomes f16, f8 becomes f22, 11 becomes 32, 16 becomes 45 and 22 becomes 64. This was pointed out by Denton Hoyer at http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-...?msg_id=00FhwX for a 150 mm Sironar. You can see this in the photo of the 180 mm Sironar on eBay -- it is because the focal length changes by x3.

I have an original brochure for the Sironar. Rodenstock didn't promise a lot for the converted mode: "satisfactory definition" by moderate stopping down.

On the eBay lens, as already said, the word "APO" is in a different font. It is also in the wrong location, spaced well after "Sironar".