Rsuggestions for a smallish 150 lens

[Hollis]

Anyone know anything about a 150 5.6 XENAR? Any good? Nice and small and there is one for sale locally.

[David Karp]

The 150 f/5.6 Xenar is a Tessar type, 4 elements in 3 groups. Should be very sharp. Single coated. Will have a smaller image circle than a plasmat design 150.

[lbenac]

Anyone know anything about a 150 5.6 XENAR? Any good? Nice and small and there is one for sale locally.

I have one along with a Xenar 210/6.1 and love the combo.
Alternative are also Caltar-II N 150/5.6 (Sironar-N) and G-Claron 150/9

[Hollis]

Thanks - going to pick up one for $200 today.

[IanG]

Thanks - going to pick up one for $200 today.

Well these are the best of the modern Tessar & type lenses. I've been using one and stopped down to f22 it's as good as my 150mm Sironar N, the downside is less coverage and only room for slight movements but they are small and light.

Ian

[Bernice Loui]

Xenar, and tessars in general quite under rated in many ways. They are small, usually don't cost very much, do not have a large image circle (about 60 degrees).

Yet, they remain my favorites. Stopped down past f8/f11 they are plenty sharp. At f22 they equal the modern plasmat. provided the lens in question is not a dud.
There is one thing a good tessar does that modern plasmats do not, they generally have smoother out of focus transition than the plasmat and other modern designs. If the tessar is in one of the older shutters or barrel with a truly round aperture, the out of focus transition is better still.

Don;t be fooled by high contrast that may appear to make the lens sharper than it really might be.

For images where everything is to be rendered SHARP, modern lenses are good, in images where not all of the image is sharp, older designs IMO, are better. If one considers that stopping down to f16/f32 results in similar sharpness and not obsessing about imagecircle/coverage the tessar design is a pretty nice trade off.


Bernice

[Hollis]

FWIW, I think I found out why my images were coming in less than sharp. Looks like the neutral marking for my front standard on my Wista SP is actually off by about 5 deg. so, when I was zeroing it out, I was in fact actually tilting the front standard ever so slightly. Seems like this would explain why everyones feet in my images would go soft.

[C. D. Keth]

That would certainly do it, Hollis. You ought to (if you haven't already) set up parallel to a wall with some newspaper tacked up and check the other witness marks. I'm not super crazy about parallelism but it's surprising how far off some of the cameras' factory markings can be.

[jonreid]

I have a 150 f6.3 Computar Symmetrigon which is quite small with the hood removed. Nice and sharp and just covers 5x7.

[Professional]

I will hold my Rodenstock Sironar-N 150mm APO f5.6 for a while until i can get another 150 version that could be better or sharper, the replies here making it more difficult or confused, not only 1 option but many, but for now this 150mm is not my top priority lens anyway.