Any Real Reason To Favor One Particular Lens Line?

[Mark Sampson]

As far as color rendition, contrast, and consistency across one manufacturer's lens line- I'll venture to say that none of us here are shooting large-format transparency film for offset reproduction. Until twenty years or so ago, that was how commercial (advertising) photographers made their living. The camera original was the deliverable (final product). Thus the need for consistency across different lenses.
Since color doesn't matter in b/w, and those shooting LF color now have their work mediated by digital post-production, and there are no picky art directors looking through their Schneider loupes, there is no reason beyond personal choice to own a matched set of lenses.
Remember that all of these lenses were expensive when new; they were designed to serve a demanding and competitive professional market; and so the LF lenses often served as their manufacturer's flagship products, the best that they could make.
I'll suggest that almost any LF lens made since WWII will be more than good enough (given good physical and mechanical condition). And while it's true that the most modern lenses have more contrast than their predecessors from the 1940s-1960s, that difference is actually less than you might expect.

[Vaughan]

I'll suggest that almost any LF lens made since WWII will be more than good enough (given good physical and mechanical condition.

Agreed. I'm more concerned with the shutter the lens is in.

[jnantz]

A lot of stuff is hype .. seems to me at least that most lenses (unless they are a specialty lens like soft focus portrait landscape &c ) are similar and chances are if you saw images lined up done by 5 different lenses you might not be able to tell them apart maybe other people have that super power but I sure don't. The main thing is price.. and personal preference
Good luck!
John

**. added later . **
you might do a google search or a brand brochure images to compare or if you like graphs and charts they might have white papers to compare. I would have suggested to do a tag search on Flickr or similar websites, but people do post production work on all their images so you wouldn't be able to see any variety.

[John Layton]

...but I do think that a lack of consistency in color contrast does equate to a lack of consistency in black and white (PANchromatic) tonal (contrast) rendering and (therefore) filter response, but that these affects are typically relatively very minor in practice.

[Tin Can]

I prefer variety

I love my old lenses without modern shutters

ANSI shutter speeds may vary by a lot

Look it up

Good shooters know variables

[xkaes]

The counter men were pros in their own way back then, and one of them told me that, in his opinion, Fuji had the highest quality of all.

Fuji claimed to be the leader in air-spaced designs with many 6/6 and 8/6 lenses. They claimed this produced better edge-to-edge sharpness. And their exclusive EBC coating (up to 21 ultra-thin layers) was top-notch.

[Drew Wiley]

neil - that was long ago, and some designs like the Nikon M are inherently more contrasty than even their other designs of comparable vintage because of less air-glass interfaces. These were multi-coated tessar design. Sexton liked these M's for their small size and portability too. But Fuji deliberately marketed their own tessar L -series with a single coating, better tailored to the studio portrait market. Too much contrast is not necessarily desirable. The highest contrast lens I ever had was the last version of the Kern 14 inch Dagor - only 4 air/glass interfaces plus superb multi-coating. It was just too much contrast for the color chrome shooting I was doing at the time, and I replaced it with the previous single-coated version.

Schneider chose to only single-coat its G-Claron taking lenses, and it wasn't just to save cost, but a deliberate choice for sake of optimizing what they had in mind as its primary market - studio tabletop photography. But Fuji's comparable A-series was multi-coated, except for the earliest samples, and has a bit higher contrast. I own examples of both brands, and select accordingly to fine-tune the contrast which is best for each project. It makes a difference especially with color film, although otherwise, I consider both GC's and Fuji A's of equally high quality.

And the actual hue rendering distinction between them is identical for all practical purposes; the brand make no difference in that respect, nor would you see any color difference
with a Nikkor M lens. Of all my lenses, only the Kern Dagor has a slightly warmer rendering. Pretty much a moot point with lenses from the big four 70's onwards.

[BrianShaw]

“ Pretty much a moot point with lenses from the big four 70's onwards.” sums up my approach to LF lenses for quite a while. In the 1980’s, when I bought most of my LF equipment , I thought those differences might have mattered. For the past couple of decades I’m much more satisfied using older and less sophisticated lenses.

“ Good shooters know variables” is also very true. Different needs for different photographers and rarely, it seems, does online advice fully answer the question of individual needs, perception, or photographic vision.

[Joshua Dunn]

As a guy thinking about getting into LF, I've been searching through a lot of older posts here. There are lots of posts asking to compare different "modern" (coated) optics, both in the form of "X focal length from Y brand or Z brand" or even "X focal length from Y line and Z line within the same brand", and the consensus usually seems to be "you can't go wrong [unless one of the two doesn't cover the image circle you need]".

So is it really the consensus that there's no strong distinction in "look", sharpness, even build quality, and doesn't really matter whether I pick Schneider vs Fuji vsNikon vs Rodenstock? Or even, like, Symmar S vs APO-Symmar?

Would you even think it matters, once I pick one, that I stick with it? Are two focals lengths of Nikkor-W's going to "match" any better than a Nikkor-W and a Nikkor-M? Or a Nikkor-SW and a Super Angulon XL?

JLeeSaxon,

You mention you are thinking about getting into large format. If that means you don't have much experience in large format then you have a steep learning curve ahead of you. You need good lenses to start but do not get your head wrapped around getting the best lenses right from the beginning. You have a lot of factors that will effect your negatives, the lens is just one of them. There are plenty of good lenses from all the manufactures discussed in this thread. You mentioned Schneider Symmar-S vs Apo-Symmar. Apo-Symmar lenses are more modern lens designs and have more optically precise coatings (most beneficial for color) however, Symmar-S lenses are still very good lenses and available for a fraction of the cost of Apo-Symmar lenses of a similar focal length. The same can be said for Rodenstock Apo-Sironar S vs. Apo-Sironar N. As someone new to large format, I doubt you will be able to tell the difference between them. For what it's worth I have lenses from all of those manufacturers and use them for different applications.

I would look for good Schneider Symmar-S or Rodenstock Apo-Sironar-N lenses and start with those. Don't be afraid to buy a Nikkor or Fuji at a good price. This will save you a lot of money in which you can reinvest in everything else you need, camera, film (super expensive now), chemistry, processing equipment etc. If you absolutely fall in love with large format and are finding technical limitations with your first lens purchases, you can always upgrade. Those lenses likely hold their value and should have a similar price in a year or two, so you have a good chance of selling them for a similar price that you bought them for.

Lastly spend time searching this forum. It's an amazing resource, you can learn a lot and it can really help with your introduction to large format.

-Joshua

[Mark J]

I'd second Joshua's comments, the Symmar-S ( and Sironar-N ) are almost as good as the later Apo versions, they are a real bargain when you look at the Ebay prices. They are really sharp and hardly flare at all if you point them into the sun. I assume ( maybe not ) that you're thinking of 4 x 5 " ?