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Thread: Looking for lenses made by rodenstock and schneider for other brands

  1. #41

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    Re: Looking for lenses made by rodenstock and schneider for other brands

    Ian,

    To make it simple.

    Linhof buys lenses from the manufacturers. They ship the number of lenses ordered to Linhof. Linhof tests them and returns any that are not to Linhof's standards.

  2. #42
    IanG's Avatar
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    Re: Looking for lenses made by rodenstock and schneider for other brands

    Quote Originally Posted by IanG View Post
    That needs qualifying because Linhof weren't picking the best of all the lenses only from batches.
    Ian
    Quote Originally Posted by Bob Salomon - HP Marketing View Post
    Ian,
    To make it simple.
    Linhof buys lenses from the manufacturers. They ship the number of lenses ordered to Linhof. Linhof tests them and returns any that are not to Linhof's standards.

    I think we are saying the same thing Bob just from different perspectives. There's always been an implication (and it's in some peoples comments in this thread) that Linhof were creaming off the best lenses from the manufacturers they were buying from.

    There's a very significant difference between Linhof buying say 1000 lenses and rejecting a small percentage after their own testing and them testing a much larger number and selecting the 1000 lenses from maybe 2-3000 lenses they had tested first.

    Presumably Linhof began their own testing & selection becasue of the variable quality of Carl Zeiss Jena lenses after WWII which caused problems for other companies as well particularly Rollei.

    Ian

  3. #43

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    Re: Looking for lenses made by rodenstock and schneider for other brands

    Sinaron Lenses are great... One problem thou... People keep taking them out of their DBM mounts and putting them in shutters without any regarded to the element spacing.

    Each shutter/ mount is different so Sinar had to optimize the spacing for each mount. The ones that were moved be amateurs looking to make a quick buck might not perform as well.

    That is why I prefer DBM mounted Sinaron lenses, plus they are cheaper then the shuttered version. You just need to rig one of those auto aperture shutters on it. The shutter is cool because you can use it with any barrel lens as long as its not too... Its cool for those who want to try old lenses for certain looks, plus you can take advantage of all of those cheap barrel mounted apo-ronars.

  4. #44

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    Re: Looking for lenses made by rodenstock and schneider for other brands

    Quote Originally Posted by 8x10 user View Post
    Each shutter/ mount is different so Sinar had to optimize the spacing for each mount.
    The spacing of DBM mounts and Copal/Compur shutters of similarly recent vintage is standardized. DBM mounts came strictly in the regular Compur/Copal spacing, and the instructions for DBM mounting lenses only concerned aperture adjustment, and no shimming other than the requirement to insert all shims shipped with the board or lens cells. But in practice, I've never seen a board with shims (and I mounted dozens while jobbing at a dealer), and very few 80's vintage lenses with a factory shim either.

    Maybe Sinar sometimes used DBM boards past the tolerance with a correcting shim for their own (affordable) Sinaron series while shipping the flawless boards for other makers lenses. But by the time of CNC lathes, the failure rate will have been so low that they could afford to toss the few substandard items they made. I think it is more likely to be a misunderstanding: Sinar offered a range of pre-adjusted DBM boards for common lenses so that the dealership had nothing more to do than screw in the cells - but that concerned the aperture, not spacing.

  5. #45

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    Re: Looking for lenses made by rodenstock and schneider for other brands

    I'm sorry but I disagree, there are differences in all copal and compur shutters they talk about it on Schneider's site. I have had maybe a dozen or more Sinaron lenses in my hands, I have even had multiples of the same lens at the same time (with close serial #'s)... The thicknesses of the shims were different.

    A DB or DBM board is not like any other lens board as it includes the aperture and the cells screw into the "board" rather then being mounted using a retaining ring. Sinar did sell "kits" to home mount lenses toward the end but it might be that they were under pressure to do so by the end users it does not mean that the practice did not hurt the tolerances.

    The lens manufactures (not "the dealership") do check the distances and correct if necessarily, before sending the new lenses to a retailer.

    BTW, used lens dealers are not necessarily the authorities on the best optical practices. I actually prefer to purchase from a photographer then a dealer not that there aren't exceptions. I know of dealers who constantly move lenses from one shutter to another. Do they really care if it could hurt the lenses performance? No, they do it to make money. Its a shame IMO as the Sinar auto aperture systems is pretty cool, although not so portable like most Sinar... Fantastic for the studio though!

  6. #46

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    Re: Looking for lenses made by rodenstock and schneider for other brands

    Quote Originally Posted by 8x10 user View Post
    I'm sorry but I disagree, there are differences in all copal and compur shutters they talk about it on Schneider's site. I have had maybe a dozen or more Sinaron lenses in my hands, I have even had multiples of the same lens at the same time (with close serial #'s)... The thicknesses of the shims were different.
    Shims for the DBM board? Shims for lenses are standard - to have room for deviation to either side, they usually have a default shim even when perfect. Shims for DBM boards were unusual at least in the late eighties - maybe they had them at some other time.

    Quote Originally Posted by 8x10 user View Post
    DB or DBM board is not like any other lens board as it includes the aperture and the cells screw into the "board" rather then being mounted using a retaining ring. Sinar did sell "kits" to home mount lenses toward the end but it might be that they were under pressure to do so by the end users it does not mean that the practice did not hurt the tolerances.
    I would not call the period right after the Sinaron introduction "towards the end". With the introduction of the Sinaron series, they stopped providing factory mounted lenses of any other brand at least on the German market. But they continued to offer pre-adjusted DBM boards for Schneider, Rodenstock and Nikon lenses.

    Quote Originally Posted by 8x10 user View Post
    BTW, used lens dealers are not necessarily the authorities on the best optical practices.
    Maybe. But then I have never seen one in my life - whatever experience I have is with official Sinar or Linhof dealers. Indeed "used large format dealers" might be a purely US phenomenon, for all I know there hasn't been a single professional used large format dealer with a brick and mortar presence in all Europe for the 30 years I have been professionally into photography.

  7. #47

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    Re: Looking for lenses made by rodenstock and schneider for other brands

    I think just about ever Sinaron lens I had except for a 300mm Macro Sinaron had shims in it. They were not rare at all and they used them for the same reason as put them in shuttered lenses.

    The new Sinaron lenses came in boxes with the serial number and if it was DBM or copal on the label. I don't think the retailers were sent extra boards to move new shuttered sinaron lenses into DBM mounts, they had both in stock and the boards were expensive so why would they do that? It makes sense that Sinar would sell boards for people who want to convert to the Sinar system or if they wanted to use a Schneider or Nikon lens. I'm sure there was also a away that a customer could have a shuttered lens converted to DBM by a professional who had the equipment to optimize the spacing.

    If you search around the issue lens spacing and the consequences moving lenses from one shutter to another without optimization has been debated for years. Who really knows how much if any it would effect performance, and of course maybe some lenses are less sensitive to these changes and some shutters are going to be a closer match then others. I guess its a your mileage might vary situation. Anyway DBM boards work like shutters in that you screw the cells into them the issues are the same with either one.

    Personally I would not trust that a Copal shutter Sinaron lenses is going to be as good as a DBM one without knowing that it was originally sold in a shutter. There is money to made in Frankensteining Sinaron lenses and it upsets me because I do believe that there was a lot of hard work put into getting the distances right and once they separate the lens cells from its original mount that work is lost. I suspect that more then half of the used shuttered Sinaron lenses were done in this way. IMO its a bad practice, especially since they sell the lenses like they were in their original shutters with no warning to the customer. I do think that it is mostly US dealers that do this but that does not mean European dealers are any better. There is a big dealer in Germany who sold me two "mint" Sinaron SE lenses that were dirty and had big honking scratches in the glass (maybe not that big but certainly signification, maybe 1 Cm or so at medium thickness). The dealer wouldn't all me to return the items and left me a negative feedback/ banned me after I complained to paypal. This was a major dealer, and I would have been a great customer if he just had some integrity.

    Some dealers are better and actually provide a service to the community IMO.

  8. #48

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    Re: Looking for lenses made by rodenstock and schneider for other brands

    I mostly talk about used lenses because new Sinaron lenses are more expensive then Rodenstock's. I don't even know if Sinar still sells Sinaron lenses for LF, at least probably not for anything larger then 4x5.

  9. #49

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    Re: Looking for lenses made by rodenstock and schneider for other brands

    Quote Originally Posted by 8x10 user View Post
    I think just about ever Sinaron lens I had except for a 300mm Macro Sinaron had shims in it.
    Of course they had - one shim usually goes with every set of cells. I was talking about the board/shutter side of things - as far as I remember none of the DBM boards I've unpacked and assembled ever had a board side shim (even though the instructions mentioned that possibility).

    Quote Originally Posted by 8x10 user View Post
    The new Sinaron lenses came in boxes with the serial number and if it was DBM or copal on the label. I don't think the retailers were sent extra boards to move new shuttered sinaron lenses into DBM mounts,
    No, positively not - Sinaron lenses were exclusively sold mounted, either in shutter or in DBM.

    As far as I can make out, no Sinaron LF lenses are made any more, but they still use (or recently used) the name for digital medium format lenses...

  10. #50

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    Re: Looking for lenses made by rodenstock and schneider for other brands

    Quote Originally Posted by 8x10 user View Post
    Personally I would not trust that a Copal shutter Sinaron lenses is going to be as good as a DBM one without knowing that it was originally sold in a shutter. There is money to made in Frankensteining Sinaron lenses and it upsets me because I do believe that there was a lot of hard work put into getting the distances right and once they separate the lens cells from its original mount that work is lost.
    Well, it is hard to tell what they did with Sinaron lenses, as these were factory mounted. But I assume they were using just as good components for them as for third party lenses. And where these were concerned, the official procedure was to provide a shim with the cells to space them to standard dimensions, and to adjust (or shim, where needed) the shutter or DBM mount so that it is standard spaced - mounting the cells complete with their shim set on any factory supplied shutter or DBM mount was intended to be safe.

    But YMMV after all these years - if both the cells and shutter/DBM had shims it may be hard to tell which one belongs to what. And if you don't know the lineage and history of a lens, you cannot even know whether the cells and shims all belong together, nor whether the cells have been taken apart and are now missing internal shims.

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