Schnieder 270mm F-11 G-Claron WA lense

[Randy Unruh]

Can anyone tell me of the value and quality of this lense? Is it a good choice for 8 x 10 landscape photography in B & W and in Color?

[Jimmy Peguet]

I've just tried a G-Claron 270 WA mounted on a Copal 3. I planned to use this lens (huge and a bit heavy, 980 g shutter included) for 7x17" work. I've been very surprised with the results on 8x10" negatives. Focused at infinity and stopped at f/32, a large part of the picture was blurred. Not simply soft, not only the corners, but a really large part all around the picture was completely blurred. It was clearly visible on the ground glass, there was a big difference when focusing between the center and the edges. The negatives were bad of course. Thinking it was a defect of this lens, I tried another 270 WA on the shutter, I got exactly the same results.

I was disappointed because I'm a great fan of G-Clarons, I own and use for 8x10" work a 210, a 240 and above all a 305. Good lenses for landscape, great at short distances. The 270 WA is a 4 elements lens, the classical G-Clarons are 6 elements.

Jim Galli told me once on APUG that the 270 WA was a fine lens for landscape. His comments would be interesting.

[Jim Galli]

Not sure why you had those results Jimmy. I have used a 270 f11 WA on my 11X14 and found the results excellent. The design is similar to the Kodak WF Ektar of 250mm. That said, they are huge and they don't fit well in a Copal 3 shutter. Their prices reflect this also. The 270 f9 I mentioned in the other thread is the much smaller lighter plasmat design that goes in Copal 1 and takes a 62mm filter. I would steer clear of the bigger f11 version. Strikes against it are it's huge, you could never use filters, it's very heavy, and it needs a $400 shutter that would then need some machine work for it to fit.

[John Kasaian]

Randy,

I once contacted Schneider re the WA G Clarons and was told that they would perform quite poorly at infinity---IMHO, the "kiss of death" for landscape work. They were designed for the graphic arts trade and are specially designed exclusively for that function. The f/9 G Clarons were also intended for graphic arts but they perform very well at infinity(and if you find one in barrel form, they screw nicely into copals (or the press shutters that are coming off of polaroid copy cameras that show up on e-bay!) I'd suggest sticking wth a normal G Claron. A 270mm would be a fine focal length, just make sure its an f/9 (a 9-1/2" or 10-3/4" Dagor would be sweet as well!)

Cheers!

[Ted Harris]

A note on Polaroid shutters. Some of them are simply rebranded #0 and #1 Press shutters and some are not. Some have standard threads in the front but no tin the back, others do not have variable aperatures.

[John Kasaian]

This is an interesting thread! I'm really curious about the WA G Claron issue now. I've heard from a fairly well known photographer that he had unsatisfactory results with a WA G Claron as well, though the image circle was huge and quite useable, just that infinity wasn't up to par (which echos Schneider's position!)

Jim Galli's observation that it would be a difficult fit to mount in a shutter is supported by an example given on SK Grimes' website (well worth checking out BTW) and if the job were to be improperly done any lens' performance would suffer. OTOH, if the idea of mounting a WA G Claron was impractacle performance-wise, I doubt that it would have been recommended or even exemplified by S K Grimes.

Since I have never used a WA G Claron(the Schneider rep talked me out of the idea) I can only relate what I've been told, not from personal experience so please take my words with a grain of salt. I have seen examples of the G Claron and it is a heavy monster of a lens though.

[Jimmy Peguet]

A mistake in my previous post, the 270 was mounted in a Compur 3, not in a Copal. The lens fits directly in the Compur threads, the front of the shutter being reamed because of the size of the front element of the G-Claron, too big to be screwed on directly on the normal shutter.

When focusing to a 150 m distant subject, the difference on the focusing rail is about 5-6 mm between focus at the center and focus at the edge (center and edges are not sharp at the same time on the GG). The picture on the ground glass is also much less contrasty than with other lenses, focusing is less easy.

Sorry for my english, it's late here :-)

[kreig]

In regards to the poor performance of the WA version, is there any possibility of respacing the two cells? Not too long ago there was an article about Doctor lenses in View Camera Magazine. There was a brief note about the use of a spacer ring for some of the graphic arts lenses when used at infinity. Could this be a possible solution?

[Michael Jones]

I had Steve Grimes mount a 270 WA G-Claron into a Copal #3 several years ago. It was fine for 8x10, but anything larger mirrored the poor experience mentioned above. I tried it on my 7x17 and Dick Phillips tried in on his 7x17 and 8x16 with the same results: "Focused at infinity and stopped at f/32, a large part of the picture was blurred. Not simply soft, not only the corners, but a really large part all around the picture was completely blurred. It was clearly visible on the ground glass, there was a big difference when focusing between the center and the edges." Spacing was not an issue as the lens was new in the box and sent directly to Steve to mounting. I sold the lens immediately and went back to Artars.

Mike