Anyone ever use a d-claron?

[Darin Cozine]

anyone ever use a d-claron? Does it work well at infinity? I ordered a 180mm.. think it will fit into a copal 1 shutter?

thanks!

[Brian Ellis]

You mean a G Claron? If that's what you mean plenty of people use them, I use the 150 and 210 and they work fine at infinity. However, I didn't know the G Claron was made in a 180mm focal length. My catalog from 10 or so years ago shows G Clarons of 150, 210, and up, no 180. Maybe the 180 had been discontinued by the time my catalog was published.

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

The D-Clarons are Schneider's Macro lenses, apparently very high quality, like the Zeiss Luminar. Some details here:

http://www.macrolenses.de/ml_detail.php?ObjektiveNr=146

or if you can read German:

http://www.schneider-kreuznach.com/archiv/pdf/d_claron.pdf

[Michael S. Briggs]

There are two documents on D-Clarons at the German Schneider website: http://www.schneider-kreuznach.com/archiv/archiv.htm,
D-Claron, Objektive für die Dokumentation (Archivierung) (9/68), for focal lengths 10 to 210 mm, and D-Claron, Objektive für die Mikro-Dokumentation (in German and English) for focal lengths 16 to 40 mm.





From what I can dechiper from the documents, the original market for the D-Clarons would probably be termed microfilming in English. One document shows the film format as 16 mm for most of the lenses, ranging up to 105 mm for the 210 mm focal length. Typical reproduction ratios are listed as 1:few to 1: about 20. These lenses were designed to make reduced size images of documents. Hopefully someone with better German than myself can contribute.





Reduction is the opposite of the function of true macro lenses such as the Luminars or Schneider M-Componons, which were designed to make larger than life size images. A reversed D-Claron might work well as a LF macro lens.





Neither document lists a 180 mm lens, so it is probably from a different time period. The chances that it will fit directly into a Copal shutter are low. The 210 mm D-Claron is the closest focal length listed, and the table shows reproduction ratios from 1:2.25 to 1:12.8 (for A4 to 2A0 to 105 mm film), suggesting that the lens might work well, in the non-reversed configuration, for closeups in which the object is a few times larger than the image up to 10X larger. The image size of 93 X 132 mm is very similar to 4x5.

[Darin Cozine]

Thanks Michael. When I get it I will post my findings.

[Kirk Gittings]

I use a 305 "G" Claron. It is superb at infinity.