Brand consistency throughout lens lineup?

[David R Munson]

Preface: right now I'm shooting with two Schneider lenses, a 135mm Symmar-S and a 210mm Symmar•EX. I'm looking to add a 300mm lens and something wider as well, probably a 90mm.

I'd like to maintain the Schneider brand when I add lenses, but I wonder if there's really any actual, practical value in brand consistency. Like, if I get a Rodenstock or Nikon 300mm f/5.6, in practice how much would either of them actually differ from a Schneider? I'm guessing next to no difference in practical terms, but there's also a lot about optics I don't know.

Glass gurus? What say ye?

[Shootar401]

I have a Rodenstock 210, Fuji 150, a Nikkor 90 and 65 and a Eastman 7.5" All are optically identical from what I can tell. Now I would NEVER use a 3rd party lens on my Nikon 35mm's. But with LF pretty much all things are equal.

[Frank Petronio]

Back in the day when people had to shoot chromes against grey backgrounds with Kodak EPR or something finicky like that, you would test your film and often have to add a very subtle Wratten gel filter to neutralize the color... perhaps having the same brand, age, and design series of lenses helped you to be more consistent with filtration and overall look of the film. But there was also more sample variation between lenses back then too, so you could consider the whole idea moot.

Still, given the choice, I'll wait for or pay a few bucks more just to keep everything "tidy" for my mental health. But it really doesn't matter.

It is nice to use the same type of shutter so you get in the habit of operating it efficiently but still, it isn't that taxing to switch.

[Fotoguy20d]

I doubt there's much difference between Nikkor, Fujinon, Schneider and Rodenstock but I like to stick with all the same brand (Nikkor in my case). At least with the 75/4.5, 90/8 and 210/5.6, they all use the same filter size, which is convenient. My 135/5.6 is a Schneider but someday it too will be a Nikkor (and probably a 150/5.6)

Dan

[Kirk Gittings]

Back in the day when people had to shoot chromes against grey backgrounds with Kodak EPR or something finicky like that, you would test your film and often have to add a very subtle Wratten gel filter to neutralize the color... perhaps having the same brand, age, and design series of lenses helped you to be more consistent with filtration and overall look of the film. But there was also more sample variation between lenses back then too, so you could consider the whole idea moot.

Still, given the choice, I'll wait for or pay a few bucks more just to keep everything "tidy" for my mental health. But it really doesn't matter.

It is nice to use the same type of shutter so you get in the habit of operating it efficiently but still, it isn't that taxing to switch.

In the days of film for commercial work it was a test of your metal to get a matched set of chromes from different lenses. This was true of architecture and interiors too. Now its much easier to do do the matching in PS.

[Jody_S]

If I were to start over I would probably have some loyalty to Fuji, but it would be strictly a quality/price thing and not a poor opinion of the other players' lenses. As it is, of course, I don't own a single one.

[Vaughn]

I have a friend who said, "I want to stick with German glass, not any Japanese." I thought..."Whatever floats your boat."

If I was concerned about such things, I'd be more likely to stick to the same brand shutter, such as Copal...just to make that part of the operation consistent. As it is I have a Caltar, Fujis, RD Artars, Raptars, Computars, Rodenstock, etc in all sorts of shutters or barrels. They all do the job. I'll save the obsessing for image and print quality.

I have a Gowland (4x5), Zone VI (8x10), and a couple old Eastman Kodak cameras (5x7 and 11x14).

My tool chest is an odd collection of adjustable spanners, screwdrivers, etc, too.

And even though I have triplet boys, they are all very different, too.

[Heroique]

Me, I owned two Schneiders (110, 150) – then purchased a Fuji (240).

This was not easy, and I expected the worse.

But I got through it, and now I don’t notice.

[Oren Grad]

Rendering of out-of-focus areas differs across brands (e.g. Rodenstock vs Schneider vs Fuji vs Nikon) and often across lens types (e.g. normal plasmats vs wide angles) and generations within a brand and type (e.g. Rodenstock Sironar vs Sironar-N). It's up to you to decide, based on the kinds of pictures you take and on your own perception and esthetic preferences, whether that matters.

[Peter Gomena]

As others have said, in the old days of shooting chromes on tabletop subjects, there could be a subtle difference between lenses that took a little filtration to equalize if absolute consistency was required.

I find lens types within a brand to produce as different an effect as mixing brands. All my lenses are Schneiders made between 1972 and about 1992. Of all the lenses, a mixture of plasmats and wide-angles. The 305 G-Claron stands out as producing an image with an almost biting sharpness, noticeably different than all the others, which produce a smoother image. I see very little color difference between all of them, probably due as much to consistency in the coatings as anything else.

Peter Gomena

[E. von Hoegh]

Preface: right now I'm shooting with two Schneider lenses, a 135mm Symmar-S and a 210mm Symmar•EX. I'm looking to add a 300mm lens and something wider as well, probably a 90mm.

I'd like to maintain the Schneider brand when I add lenses, but I wonder if there's really any actual, practical value in brand consistency. Like, if I get a Rodenstock or Nikon 300mm f/5.6, in practice how much would either of them actually differ from a Schneider? I'm guessing next to no difference in practical terms, but there's also a lot about optics I don't know.

Glass gurus? What say ye?

In the Good Old Days, when stuff was photographed on reversal film it had to be right from the get-go and using a set of lenses of the same make (this was the 'pre-branding' era) and vintage was a way to reduce one variable. Professional reversal film came with a filtration reccomendation for neutral results (this was Way Back When and EKC still loved us). Japanese lenses gave a slightly warmer rendition compared to the cooler Teutonic glass.

[Bob Salomon]

"I have a Caltar, Fujis, RD Artars, Raptars, Computars, Rodenstock,"

Really this is meaningless information. Caltars have been made by several different companies. Which do you have?
Fuji has made several different lines of lenses and some are no longer available.
Rodenstock currently makes the Apo Sironar S and the Grandagon-N and Apo Grandagons. In the very recent past they also made the Apo Sironar N, Apo Sironar S, Apo Ronar and before that there were the Sionar-N MC and the Geragon and Geragon-WA as well as the Imagon. And before that there were other lenses.

If you want your statement to have meaning to others then you should state exactly what you use not just the brand name.

[Drew Wiley]

I'm as nitpicky as people get when it comes to color, and find the alleged color rendition
difference between major brands to be a myth, at least with modern lenses (post-60's).
Different categories of lens design will affect other things like contrast or possibly how
certain subtle hues are distinguished, but this is in fact a function of design rather than
brand. Taken the standard plasmats for example, the Nikkor, Fujinon, Schneider, and Rodenstock are so similar as to be non-issues. I have found Kern dagors from the 60's
and 70's to be a tad warmer in color balance, but even that only amounted to a few cc's,
and not even enough for the weakest correction filter on the lens itself to factor. And yes
I printed chrome film - a lot of it.

[Kirk Gittings]

Not a myth in my experience. Noticeable (but slight granted) difference in color rendering of Schneider, Fuji and Nikon of similar ages by my tests. Since I quite shooting chromes I don't care, but when I was shooting chromes of arch/int for major national and international magazines it made a difference and I standardized on newer Schneiders. If you wanted to compete withe big boys, it mattered.

[Ed Bray]

I have mainly Schneider 72mm, 90mm, 121mm, 150mm, 180mm, 210mm, 240mm & 300mm but do have a 125mm Fuji, 360mm Apo-Ronar and 450mm Nikkor M, in shooting black & white, I have not noticed any difference between any of them in use.

[Vaughn]

[QUOTE=Bob Salomon - HP Marketing;944032...If you want your statement to have meaning to others then you should state exactly what you use not just the brand name.[/QUOTE]

WTF? Get off your high horse. The point was the variety of lenses, not the specifics. Who bloody cares "exactly" what lenses I use?!

[Bob Salomon]

WTF? Get off your high horse. The point was the variety of lenses, not the specifics. Who bloody cares "exactly" what lenses I use?!

Anyone trying to duplicate your findings.

[Frank Petronio]

If you figure that QT intended this forum to be less of a chat room and more of an online reference for future searchers, it's a good practice to be clear about these things for all the poor newbies who stumble across this.

Have some consideration for how hard it will be for Xygon23 in the 22nd-Century when hesheit will be doing graduate-level research on early 21st-Century film zealotry as practiced by the great Frank Petronio and his cohorts... please minimize the banter and be clear with your jargon.

[C. D. Keth]

I don't worry about it at all for my stills work. All of my color work gets scanned so I can take care of color pretty easily. Motion picture work is another deal but that's not really the topic here.

[Drew Wiley]

Kirk - I'll bet the variation between light boxes that those editors used was far more than between lenses. I think I know a thing or two about color control. And I do in fact operate
color enlargers more accurate than anything that can be commercially purchased, with
monitoring devices way beyond the league of an ordinary densitometer. I see more difference between a Nikkor M and a modern Nikkor plasmat, for example, than between
other top brand plasmats. I think contrast and hue purity differences via air/glass interface
distinctions, multicoatings etc, is more a factor than brand per se. But I certainly don't
own as many lenses as some people - enough - so I could certainly be wrong. I just don't
see any practical issue for even the most critical color work. A few cc's here and there
is miniscule compared to ordinary color-temp balance issues when shooting chromes.

[Vaughn]

Anyone trying to duplicate your findings.

Bull -- duplicate my 'findings' that they all work for me? Why would anyone want to do that? There are so many other factors/variables that totally overshadow differences between the type of lenses I use...film, scenes, developers, print processes, etc. But for the record, none of my lenses are soft-focus.

I truly appreciate your contributions to this forum, but are you having a bad day? I am, so my BS tolerance is very low right now.

Frank -- if the future researchers really want to know, I hope they are smart enough to look at my profile (copied from there):

600/9 Rodenstock Apo-Ronar-CL (anybody want to buy it?)
TR 12" - 21" - 28"
19" Red Dot Artar -- barrel
300mm Fuji W f5.6
210 Wollensak Graphic Raptar -- barrel
210/6.3 Computar Symmetrigon
159mm Wollensak Series IIIA f12.5
150 Caltar f5.6

And add a 24" Red Dot Artar and a Computar 270/9 and perhaps another odd lenses here or there.

Whoops, that is a Caltar-IIN...just in case someone wants to duplicate this image -- but whoops again, a new fishing pier has been built over these pilings, and the pulp mill had been closed for years and dismantled. And Ilford Gallery, Grade 3 is tough to find these days:

[Drew Wiley]

If there was a recognizable difference (non-antique), I'd guess it would fall into that era
when Rodenstock was being modernized faster than Schneider, maybe early 70's (?).
Certainly when my brother was a commercial photographer in the 60's there was a fair
amt of color variation among lenses, and some still weren't even very well color corrected
at all. But within the last 20 yrs or so, if I pick up a single-coated G-Claron and a multi-coated Fujinon A of equal focal length (and similar design), except for a tiny difference in
contrast, I can't see any color rendition difference, or even between even of these and
a Nikkor M or a Fuji W MC plasmat. I did once use a single-coated 250/6.7 Fuji W which had a tiny bit warmer color balance - wonderful color otherwise - but those haven't been
made for quite awhile. The major lens brands have gotten so standardized that I don't think one could even purchase a CC filter with enough batch to batch control to make the
tiny correction one lens relative to another. As far as plastmats go, I'd consider the Symmar S to be the end the line prior to full modernization. By that point, all the MC Fuji's,
whether N, NW, NWS, CMW, along with the A's seem to have very tightly matched color.
I'll let the Rodenstock expert chime in with what he know. My own experience with Rodenstock is mainly in the darkroom.

[BrianShaw]

... are you having a bad day? I am, ...

Me too, so I hesitate to say anything.

As someone who has never had to match chromes exactly for publication, I've never worried about the minor differences that may occur between brands. In fact, I've never even really noticed too much of a difference in color rendition, but believe htat htere must be a difference because it is a hot topic with those who have critical color requirements.

[Dan Fromm]

Brian, I've seen huge color differences between lenses, and even from shot to shot with the same lens, all due to the sun going behind a cloud between shots. Sun behind cloud shots are blue blue blue. And I have a 35 mm E-6 shot taken with a 105/2.8 MicroNikkor of a very blue -- in color, not in mood -- alligator. Deep shade did it.

There's so much uncontrollable -- outside of the studio -- variation that discussion of small differences seems silly.

Dan "Roses are red, shade is blue" Fromm

[Drew Wiley]

I doubt any method of color printing ever invented is capable of accurately representing
some of the subtle distinctions between modern lenses. Offset color printing never could,
modern digital like inkjet far far from it. The best of darkroom like dye transfer printing
probably not - maybe a slide show could if you have a good enough projection lens.

[Frank Petronio]

Judging color of natural light is always going to be a moving target. But you guys can ask any old fart studio photographer how critical matching color was - they used 005 Wratten CC filters - and they'll tell you how exponentially easier it is with the gross moves an outdoor photographer would make.

(And in the end the Art Director would have a crappy lightbox and all that mattered was that they were consistent more than correct.)

[Drew Wiley]

And the Ektachrome itself varied from box to box, so you'd pull out those Wratten filters,
which themselves varied due to either age/fading or batch inconsistencies; and the dude's
lightbox probably had a cool-white bulb in it at best, and his eyes were fatigued, but all he really wanted was some chick in the scene in a red bikini anyway. Then it was up to the platemaker to patch it all up. But at least it was an industry which supported a lot of jobs.

[BrianShaw]

... so what is the basis of the OPs question: studio or outdoor? I didn't notice until just now that we don't seem to know.

[BrianShaw]

Dan "Roses are red, shade is blue" Fromm

:o

[Vaughn]

... so what is the basis of the OPs question: studio or outdoor? I didn't notice until just now that we don't seem to know.

His profile says he is a freelance photo assistant in Chicago and uses B&W film, no mention of color.

[BrianShaw]

Interesting.

[David R Munson]

Brian, Vaughn:

The question was simply one of idle curiosity. I've worked with a lot of shooters and have heard some interesting theories on optics.

As for matching transparencies, I shoot mostly monochrome and I'm partly colorblind anyway, so it's interesting reading but doesn't exactly represent something influencing lens choice for me. :)

[Drew Wiley]

Well, if the question wasn't about color consistency, what would it be about? Otherwise,
we're back to general issues like contrast/flare/coverage, air/glass surfaces, shutters, "bokeh", whatever. ... basically, an endless discussion of preferences.

[David R Munson]

It's not that it isn't about color consistency - it's more a matter of wondering if there were factors I hadn't considered before. You know, idle curiosity. While irrelevant to my needs, I've found discussion of color consistency interesting, as well as something to which I'd never put much thought.

[Drew Wiley]

Color rendering does seem to be a hot topic at the moment between, say, Zeiss vs Nikon
branded SLR lenses - but for what most folks actually use these cameras for nowadays,
namely, posting web images, they could probably just attach a beer bottle to the front of
the camera and get an equal result. But any hypothetical distinction among modern view
lenses are pretty subtle. My warmest lens, a single coated Kern dagor, is only about 3cc
different in printing value from all my other Nikon, Fuji, and Schneider lenses, which seem
identical. A filter wouldn't correct that, because a 5cc filter per quality control issues might be anywhere between 3 and 8cc. Some things can only be corrected right when you print or make color separations.

[Kirk Gittings]

Kirk - I'll bet the variation between light boxes that those editors used was far more than between lenses. I think I know a thing or two about color control. And I do in fact operate
color enlargers more accurate than anything that can be commercially purchased, with
monitoring devices way beyond the league of an ordinary densitometer. I see more difference between a Nikkor M and a modern Nikkor plasmat, for example, than between
other top brand plasmats. I think contrast and hue purity differences via air/glass interface
distinctions, multicoatings etc, is more a factor than brand per se. But I certainly don't
own as many lenses as some people - enough - so I could certainly be wrong. I just don't
see any practical issue for even the most critical color work. A few cc's here and there
is miniscule compared to ordinary color-temp balance issues when shooting chromes.

We used to deliver original 4x5 chromes of projects maybe 15-30 images of a given building. The editors laid out all the chromes on the same light box at the same time. The better shooters' chromes were a close match in color of surfaces and materials. So you minimized all variables. You shot the same brand and era of lenses, you shot a whole job from one box of film (or boxes with the same manufacturing date and batch) and you had all the film developed at the same lab-(preferably a Kodak Q Lab that closely watched their parameters), you color corrected everything with your color meter (even your strobe). Basically you tried to exert as much control as possible to minimize color fluctuations. IT was a huge PITA and expensive but it mattered at the top end of the market-if you couldn't control all of that you were just a second tier hack.

[Doremus Scudder]

One thing that doesn't seem to have been discussed much is contrast rendering. Although some maintain that the Japanese lenses are/were more contrasty than their German counterparts, I tend to think it is more an issue of coating than brand.

Modern multi-coated lenses are very contrasty; older uncoated lenses much less so. Single-coated lenses with few elements seem to hold up very well in the contrast department, but single-coated plasmats seem to be prone to flare and are less contrasty.

This would make a difference in my choice of lenses for black-and-white work, or at least maybe give me reason to tweak exposure/development for uncoated, flarey lenses. However, it is not really related to brand.

Other than that, for shooting black-and-white, considerations such as weight and filter size are much more important to me than brand.

I own Ektars (two Wide-field Ektars, 100 and 135mm f/6.3 and a 203mm f/7.7 for those needing details), Nikkor Ws, Schneider Super Angulons, Fujinon As and Nikkor Ms and notice no difference in contrast that would require a change in processing or exposure.

Best,

Doremus

[BrianShaw]

... You know, idle curiosity. While irrelevant to my needs, I've found discussion of color consistency interesting, as well as something to which I'd never put much thought.

I'm good with that. I enjoy this conversation too.

[Vaughn]

I'm good with that. I enjoy this conversation too.

Me, too. But in the end, ask not what a lens can do for you, but what you can do with the lens.

[Kirk Gittings]

Me, too. But in the end, ask not what a lens can do for you, but what you can do with the lens.

:)

[Brian C. Miller]

"Bring one lens, and use it well." -- me, on some other thread about what lens to bring to wherever.

Actually, I was wondering why my lenses were inconsistent with their color rendition. Then I found out that they were tripping on acid...
I wasn't getting the right colors on my pictures. Then I realized my lenses had run out of paint.
I had to scold my Rodenstock for calling the Holga a hippie.
"Color rendition? Sharpness? Get off my case! I'm a Holga!"
My lenses still aren't getting the colors right. Oh wait, I loaded the paint wrong.
Oh, it's not the lenses? It's the film? Color infrared just does that?
No, that's just how the lens does it. It's a dreamcatcher lens.
"You may think the shades are going wrong; but they're not; he just printed it like that."

[Drew Wiley]

I don't care what lens or printing system you use - at a certain point you put the best
reproduction you can possibly get beside a standardized original like an actual MacBeath
chart, and there will be errors somewhere. The best I have yet done is with a dye transfer
print on something like Astia and a true apo graphics taking lens, but even there at least one patch is a bit off. I really admire how the Holywood folks would match the colors on the set to the specific Technicolor dyes being chosen, and select their lenses and filters appropriately too. But they had real big budgets too! Pretty much a lost art now in this day of whizz-bang but otherwise boring-hue electronic movies. I wonder what the color
bias of the current Cooke SF still lens is like? Or Docter?

[ic-racer]

I'm pretty brand-loyal to Horseman lenses for physical reasons. The lenses fit the cameras physically and there is some consistency with the screw on accessories and lens-boards. It is also nice having the same shutter controls on all the 6x9cm lenses (Seiko).

In terms of comparing the optical elements and projected images of two different brands of lens, that is a futile comparison. Unless the lenses are identical construction and manufacture, it is an unfair comparison. If the lenses are of identical manufacture and construction, they should give identical images. I once tested a Caltar HR and Topcor 90mm. They differed only in the degree of lens separation. :) (They are the same lens design and manufacture).