Red Dot Artar 14" f9 at Infinity?

[Don Dudenbostel]

I’ve owned several RDA’s including a 12”, 14”, 16.5” and 19”. I owned and used them in studio and in the field for several decades. Currently I only own a 14” that was factory mounted in an Ilex shutter. RDA’s we’re specifically designed as a process lens for high resolution flat field copy work and color separations on a process camera but they perform quite well at infinity. About fifteen years ago I owned a Schneider 14” Gold Dot Dagor and did a comparison on 8x10. I was unable to see any difference with shots made in the field and the RD covered with plenty of movements stopped down. I wound up selling the Dagor and still have the RD that I have had since the 70’s. They are excellent all round lenses.

[neil poulsen]

I'm encouraged by your experience that your RDA 14" covers 8x10 well stopped down. (I'll see if that's the case with mine, given that it's mounted in a Comper 2 shutter.)

But based on what we've learned in the thread, maybe not quite a "process" lens. I think of a process lens as being optimized for 1:1, whereas this lens is optimized for 1:8. I found the following on the BHPhotoVideo site . . .

"Red Dot Artars in shutters are optimised for medium distance rather than 1:1 and should be just fine at infinity."

This is consistent with what we've learned above, given the 1:8 magnification.

This is exactly the lens that I need. I want to be able to use it for infinity; yet, I also want to photograph a violin at a medium distance.

[Drew Wiley]

Gold Dot Dagors were intended for general photography, and aren't great either very close up or at severe tangential tilts; G-Clarons are way better at that kind of thing, and have a significantly larger image circle too. Goerz had a process version called a Blue Dot Trigor. I've owned several 14 inch Dagors. What Dagors offer is only four air/glass interfaces, so highest contrast of any lens formula available, with superb microtonality, especially the last of the series - the multicoated Kern. It proved just too contrasty for me, so I reverted to the single-coated Kern. Artars are 4-element airspaced dialyte design, so with 8 air/glass interfaces. Not much difference if well stopped down and efficiently shaded, unless the character of out of focus background and subtle nuances of edge rendering come into the conversation.