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Doug Dolde
28-Sep-2005, 15:55
I have a Schneider 360mm f5.5 Tele Xenar serial number 144 498 888 which according to Schneider's chart was manufactured between Jan 91 and Feb 92. It's all black and in a modern Copal 3 shutter.

It doesn't say Multi Coated though or MC either. But it does appear to be multi-coated by the color which this photo doesn't show very well. It has a sort of pinkish or purple cast to it when you hold it right.

The Schneider site says all multi-coated lenses say so on the lens but this one doesn't. The site also seems to indicate that Schneider started multi coating lenses well over 10 years before this one was made.

Anyone have any perspective on this?

http://www.painted-with-light.com/xenar.jpg

tor kviljo
29-Sep-2005, 00:47
Single coated lenses typically have a series of purpel reflections when you peer through the lens at an angle, having a spot of light reflect each surface. On multicoated lenses, these spots shine more bright, and typically in different colors (bright yellow & blue/violet). I learned about that on Thalmann's Fuji page, have helped me a lot identifing coatings (multi/single) later on. Thus, if You only see purple reflections, possibly of slightly different intensity, it's most likely single coated. This may not be a problem though, as the Tele xenar is optically a very simple construction: only two groups (2x2) if I recall right, not supposed to be very prone to flare.

Ole Tjugen
29-Sep-2005, 04:00
My Tele-Xenar 360/5.5 is a lot older and definitely single coated. But I have shot directly into the sun, and never had problems with flare or reflections. As Tor said it's only 4 elements in 2 groups, so there would be very little benefit from multicoating.

J. P. Mose
29-Sep-2005, 05:13
I have a 135mm Leica Tele Elmar f/4 from around 1990 that isn't multicoated. One would think multicoating would be applied across the board in later years but I guess if there are few air-to-air surfaces....does it matter anyway?

By the way, a late 360mm Tele-Xenar just went for $1476 on Ebay last week. The discussion of MC was addressed on the listing:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Modern-Tele-Xenar-5-5-360-MC-mint_W0QQitemZ7547620077

I was shocked to see it sell for so much...I assumed it was worth half that amount at best!

Arne Croell
29-Sep-2005, 15:07
At least until recently, Schneider made several lens lines that were not multicoated. Those were either process lenses (G-Claron), an application were multicoating was never common, or their budget lenses. the latter would include the recent regular Xenars (150, 210 and 300mm), and probably your Tele-Xenar, too. Coating colors can be deceiving - some of the old Russian lenses have very colorful coatings but I am sure they are not MC. If the lens, being from '91 or '92, doesn't say MC, I am pretty sure it isn't. But as others mentioned, its not really an issue with this lens. I used Schneiders 210mm Xenar for years and never saw a difference compared with multicoated other lenses.