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1erCru
10-Jul-2017, 11:11
I picked up one of these and was pretty excited. I took a few shots last night in the studio and developed. The scans this morning were really soft. The object I shot was pretty close, 3.5 feet.

The same shots from my Schneider APO 210 were beautiful from about 7-8 feet. Was shooting Tmax 100 and HP5 @200.

I'm a bit perplexed. Is there a distance where this lens should attain its reputable sharpness? Maybe there's an alignment issue? The ground glass image looked great under loupe. I'll keep shooting. Any advice troubleshooting this would be appreciated.

Bob Salomon
10-Jul-2017, 11:16
It is corrected for normal shooting distances at f22. It is not. Macro lens.

Pere Casals
10-Jul-2017, 11:27
Test the lens for with a distant object at f/16 and f/22, to see if the lens has a problem.

The Sinaron SE is Sironar-S, so it is optimized for magnifications from 1:10 to infinite.

To check GG to film plane matching just place a ruler on a table, and take a shot with some 20º inclination angle, remember what number of the ruler was in focus in GG...

Arne Croell
10-Jul-2017, 16:36
At 3.5 feet from object to lens, your magnification was about 1:6. As Pere and Bob mentioned, it is not a macro lens, although 1:6 stopped down should still be reasonable. Try again with something at 1:20 - about 10ft 4" from object to lens.

1erCru
10-Jul-2017, 18:34
So what you're saying is this isn't the best studio lens. 10 feet is about twice as far away as would be useful at this focal length unless I start making 8 foot tall sculptures. As you can probably tell I am new to this , would stopping down to f32 enable closer shooting
Or am I really hamstrung by the 1:10.

I'll keep testing regardless

Edit : I misread some of the posted advice. There might be hope!..

karl french
10-Jul-2017, 19:53
Something is wrong. Even that close it should produce very nice results.

1erCru
10-Jul-2017, 19:56
Well I have 28 days to return it. Will shoot a bunch of junk and find the answer

karl french
10-Jul-2017, 20:30
Here is a shot from something like 3 feet. Testing the 240 Sinaron SE. Likely f8 or f11. Note how sharp her left eye and eye brows are. Nothing wrong with this lens up close.

Arne Croell
10-Jul-2017, 20:31
One thing to consider: Is the lens in an original shutter? Many Sinaron lenses came in the Sinar barrel mount, with the Sinar shutter mounted behind the lens. It might have been remounted into a regular shutter, which is not a problem in itself. However, Apo-Sironars and other Rodenstock lenses of the time often had shims between the front cell and the shutter to adjust for small manufacturing variations and optimize performance. I assume the Sinaron versions were similar. If such shims were present and did not get transferred to the new shutter...

karl french
10-Jul-2017, 20:40
Even so, I think that would only produce minor variations in terms of lens performance.

Something happened. Camera moved, focus was not locked down, shot wide open (forgot to stop down after focusing.)

Pere Casals
11-Jul-2017, 02:57
Even so, I think that would only produce minor variations in terms of lens performance.

Something happened. Camera moved, focus was not locked down, shot wide open (forgot to stop down after focusing.)

I'd add possible tripod problems. In case of using tilt, if tripod allowed camera to move a bit after inserting holder, the plane of focus goes away...

Tobias Key
11-Jul-2017, 04:11
You've probably made a small mistake somewhere, that's usually (and hopefully) more likely than a problem with the lens.

When I first got my view camera I was convinced the GG was misaligned, but it turned out it was my own lack of technique that was to blame.

What I did was stick set up a test (in my case a shot of some text set at an angle) and make a check list of all of steps to go through before tripping the shutter. It's easy to miss something out when you first start, particularly tightening everything down properly.

1erCru
11-Jul-2017, 19:44
It's appears that I didn't mount the lens flush to the board... as the ring wasn't seated properly. I took another shot and everything looks good. Will test more. Occam's Razor..

On a side note my Schneider APO 210 is a monster of a lens. I recently started shooting Tmax from 50-100 and am beginning to see the large format 3D carved look which I wasn't able to obtain with HP5+. Hopefully this Rodenstock will live up its rival!

Ray Marrero
25-Jul-2017, 11:07
Test the lens for with a distant object at f/16 and f/22, to see if the lens has a problem.

The Sinaron SE is Sironar-S, so it is optimized for magnifications from 1:10 to infinite.

To check GG to film plane matching just place a ruler on a table, and take a shot with some 20º inclination angle, remember what number of the ruler was in focus in GG...

Sinaron SE = Sironar-N

Oren Grad
25-Jul-2017, 11:31
Sinaron SE = Sironar-N

No.

Sinaron S = (Apo-)Sironar-N.
Sinaron SE = Apo-Sironar-S.

There is no ambiguity, as the Sinarons and the Apo-branded Rodenstocks are clearly labeled with their angle of view.

Ray Marrero
25-Jul-2017, 11:34
No.

Sinaron S = (Apo-)Sironar-N.
Sinaron SE = Apo-Sironar-S.

There is no ambiguity, as the Sinarons and the Apo-branded Rodenstocks are clearly labeled with their angle of view.



Ohhh, that's right. I stand corrected.

Bob Salomon
25-Jul-2017, 15:20
No.

Sinaron S = (Apo-)Sironar-N.
Sinaron SE = Apo-Sironar-S.

There is no ambiguity, as the Sinarons and the Apo-branded Rodenstocks are clearly labeled with their angle of view.

No, the angle of view of a lens changes with the image format. The lenses are labeled with the angle of coverage of the lens. In this case either 72 or 75°.

Oren Grad
25-Jul-2017, 15:28
Bob - there's no agreement on this. In the manufacturer brochures that happen to be within easy reach of my desk at the moment, Rodenstock uses the term "image field" for this parameter while Schneider uses the term "angle of view".

Bob Salomon
25-Jul-2017, 17:36
Bob - there's no agreement on this. In the manufacturer brochures that happen to be within easy reach of my desk at the moment, Rodenstock uses the term "image field" for this parameter while Schneider uses the term "angle of view".

Probably because English is not there mother language and the translations are also done by non English first language services. Although sometimes the companies that we represented would send us the German originals, the translation services English versions and have us put into American English.

Kaiser even went so far as to have us rewrite their brochures into US English for those products that we sold the most of and to the U.K. Distributor to put it into U.K. English for those products that the U.K. Did the best at.

So their main catalog would have one product described in American English and another product written up in UK English.

Pere Casals
26-Jul-2017, 04:13
Bob - there's no agreement on this. In the manufacturer brochures that happen to be within easy reach of my desk at the moment, Rodenstock uses the term "image field" for this parameter while Schneider uses the term "angle of view".


Probably because English is not there mother language and the translations are also done by non English first language services. Although sometimes the companies that we represented would send us the German originals, the translation services English versions and have us put into American English.

Kaiser even went so far as to have us rewrite their brochures into US English for those products that we sold the most of and to the U.K. Distributor to put it into U.K. English for those products that the U.K. Did the best at.

So their main catalog would have one product described in American English and another product written up in UK English.


Bob, interesting to know that this confusion could be related to not native English translators. Non native language translators are always a complication, but in special for technical texts, that can crash planes.

Long ago, AA in The Camera speaks about that confusion. The "angle of view" is the angle of the field seen by a photograph, this depends on the focal length, on the bellows extension (if unit focus), the format and the distorsion (case of fish eyes, not LF common).

So I understand that the angle of view is a property of the photograph, when specified for a (unit focus) lens it would be for photographs made with that lens, with a format, and with focus at infinite. I discovered that in my (unit focus) RB67 times, lenses apeared longer for portraits, compared with P67 and Hassy... Different for portraits, the same for landscape.


I've seen old debates that finally concluded clearly wrong concepts, there was a mess between View, Field and Coverage.


Another source of confusion I found is the term "wide angle". It can be both, "wide angle of coverage" or "wide angle of view", depending on context the abreviated "wide angle" is a very different concept.

1erCru
19-Sep-2017, 11:33
Just an update. I initially troubleshooter the issue with the lens not being flush , a secondary issue popped as well. The rear standard was not closing completely flush. I did not notice this because the difference for was minor and or popped up recently. I switched the rear standard with the front.

With everything flush the lens is stellar and clearly sharper than my Scheider 210 APO ( from an epson v850 ) I've taken some shots at 2 feet and they are the sharpest photographs I've ever taken. You can definitely get in close with this lens.