Are there are significant differences between APO-Nikkor and APO EL-Nikkor lenses?
From a brief look in the internet, the APO-Nikkor is a process lens, and the APO EL-Nikkor is possibly the best enlarger lenses money can buy.
But, are the APO-Nikkors just as good as an enlarger lens?
It also looks like APO-Nikkors are dirt cheap (hundreds of $$) vs APO El-Nikkors in the thousands.
My local store has two APO Nikkors on their shelf right now, a 305mm and 480mm.
regards
Vick
The Apo Nikkors are common and are optically superb for both enlarging and view camera purposes, though they are in barrel without shutter, and are typically about a stop slower than either conventional enlarging lenses or the Apo El. The two lenses
you are describing would both be superb for 8x10 enlarging use, provided they are the more modern variety in good condition. Apo El's suitable for this film size would probably sell for at least 10K, if one ever came up for sale. They are really overkill, even for very high quality work. The more common 210 version is prized by people using scanning back cameras for critical copying of paintings etc. But in terms of color accuracy, sharpness, etc, the ordinary Apo Nikkors seem to
be superior to any enlarging lens per se. I like them for fussy things like dupes and internegs, as well as for b&w printing
where a large max aperture is not necessary. For large color prints I like more speed, so use a regular 360 El Nikkor with
8x10 film. I have a variety of them mounted on Sinar boards (which my enlarger accepts), so have from time to time peeped
thru them on the 8X10 camera - pretty incredible, but not as compact as my Fuji A's and C's already in shutter.
And then there were the S-Planar and the S-Ortho-Planar lenses. Like others from other companies the S-Ortho-Planar was used for blowback use with printed circuit board prototyping. The lower resolution S-Planar only resolved 360 lines per mm.
It would be very questionable if an enlarging lens from 45mm to 150mm can outperform an Apo-Rodagon-N enlarging lens other then, perhaps, the S-Ortho-Planar.
I'll never find out. I have had the opportunity to buy a couple of clean Apo El's at reasonable pricing. But realtive to format,
they're pretty darn heavy, and also have such high resolution that they pick up every little micro-idiosyncracy in negative
carrier glass, film surface etc - way more than just the dye cloud necessary to precision printmaking. Once in awhile even the
Apo Rogadon N is over the top, namely in very high-contrast situations (but I ain't sellin' mine!!). The Apo El series is still made for critical fixed-aperture industrial usage, and I suspect Mitutoyo buys some of these for machine optics.
Enlarging lenses are optimized for projecting a flat negative to a flat piece of paper. Non enlarging lenses are optimized for taking a 3D subject and projecting that image onto a flat negative; at least that is what I have read. In one of Ansel Adams earliest basic photo series he discussed a time in the past when photographers used the taking lens to project the negative. I remember him saying this would help in the corner fall off of light by using the same lens. I assume he was referring to a time when lenses were not as well made as they are now; like before World War II.
Paul
Any lens that produces sharp images is flat field. Field curvature is due to under correction of an optic and flat field lenses make excellent images of 3D objects due to DOF inherent in a lens when it is stopped down. For properly corrected lenses, only entrant flat plane can be focused to the exit flat plane of the lens. Anything before or past this plane is apparent focus due to DOF and not where the true focus plan is.
APO Nikkors make excellent enlarging lenses. I use a 180mm f9 for 4x5 negatives. At one point there was a Goerz Magnar II, 150mm f4.5 (originally designed to enlarge 5x5 aero recon film to 10x10 aero recon fim) used as the 4x5 enlarging lens. It has higher definition than the APO Nikkor, it turns out to be point less as fiber based print paper cannot resolve or carry the increased amounts of information.
The lens used for enlarging 5x7 negatives is a 240mm f9 Goerz Red Artar which works extremely well as an enlarger lens. Consider what process lenses were designed for and what the enlarging process is, they are very much the same application as a process camera.
S-planar, S-Biogon, APO-EL Nikkor were designed for the semiconductor industry to produce mask. Yes, these are very high resolution lenses but they work best a light wave lengths a shorter than green light. Another optic sought by collectors is the UV Nikkor which was optimized for UV light in semiconductor mask production. The shorter light wavelength allows much higher resolution that would be possible if green or visible light was used.
There was a shop in town that did work for Lockheed making semiconductor photo mask. They would do Rubylith & tape -up that were 12 feet x 12 feet is size. This art work would be put on a process camera for reduction. The lens used was a 47 inch f12.5 Goerz Red Dot Artar on a very, very large process camera. The size reduced film was then further reduced to reduced to produce a semiconductor photo mask.
Bernice
Good ole AA was never much of a whizz about optics. He intelligently used what worked for him, but later in life was in fact
equipped with stuff in the dkrm which was way behind the times. Nikon is alive and well in true industrial optics, and these
kinds of Apo El spinoffs seem to get customized for specific applications, narrowed down to specific wavelenths of transmission at set distances. The Apo El most of us are referring to, however, was basically a super-corrected process lens.
I would have bought one if I actually thought it could make any difference in my prints. But what I want to do is get as much
of the image information itself on the print, not micro-artifacts like subtle Newton rings that wouldn't even show with a
conventional enlarging lens. There can be too much of a good thing when it comes to optical performance. And the far cheaper and smaller ordinary Apo Nikkors give super performance just one stop down. Yeah ... I know... someone will quote
how graphics lenses are spec'd at f/22 - but that's for halftone copy work, not enlarging!
"But what I want to do is get as much
of the image information itself on the print, not micro-artifacts like subtle Newton rings that wouldn't even show with a
conventional enlarging lens.
Since the AN surface of a glass carrier is supposed to be only on the base side of the film and you are focusing critically on the emulsion side of the film the Newton rings should not be apparent with any quality enlarging lens at any aperture that you would print at.
Nope Bob. At one point I was testing twenty different samples of AN glass from all over the world, and the net effect is a very complex interaction between the specific pattern of the glass, the contrast and angle of incidence of the light per enlgr
lens, the nature of the original (dye cloud vs various silver particles), all this assuming a very shallow optimized field. I also
tested various multicoated optical glasses for the carrier itself. The answer - nothing simple. It all depends. But for color work I generally use AN glass both above and below the film. No resolution loss. The point is to have the correct glass for
the specific application. Sadly, there aren't many choices left anymore.
Since we are Gepe, who used more AN glass then any other photo company, we can tell you that AN glass is normally made two different ways.Originally Posted by Drew Wiley
Inexpensive AN glass has a sprayed on material to act as the AN agent.
Best AN glass is acid etched, this is what Gepe used.
And since Newton rings form when a smooth surface, like the base side of film, comes in contact with another smooth surface, like glass, there is no reason to put AN glass on the emulsion side of most films used for printing.
An exception to this was dupe film.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks