Coverage of 150mm Symmar S

[Scotty230358]

I have a 150mm f5.6 Schneider Symmar S manufactured between 1972 and 1974. This is a compact, sharp and contrasty lens. Schneiders lens data gives this lens an image circle of 210mm at f22 which should, theoretically give me around 48mm of movement. However I am running out of coverage even with modest use of rise and tilt. The lens is too sharp to be suffering from element misalignment so I would be grateful for any ideas as to why this particular lens has such lousy coverage. I am pretty sure I am not using even close to 48mm of rise.

[E. von Hoegh]

I have a 150mm f5.6 Schneider Symmar S manufactured between 1972 and 1974. This is a compact, sharp and contrasty lens. Schneiders lens data gives this lens an image circle of 210mm at f22 which should, theoretically give me around 48mm of movement. However I am running out of coverage even with modest use of rise and tilt. The lens is too sharp to be suffering from element misalignment so I would be grateful for any ideas as to why this particular lens has such lousy coverage. I am pretty sure I am not using even close to 48mm of rise.

The image circle is 210mm. The format diagonal is 150~mm. This gives a possible 30mm max displacement. You're "modest" use of rise and tilt is going beyond that, tilt and rise use up coverage very quickly, and your results are about what I'd expect.

[Scotty230358]

Thanks for that. As most 150mm lenses (in my price range) probably have much the same image circle it looks like I will have to be more careful with composition and lens choice.

[E. von Hoegh]

Thanks for that. As most 150mm lenses (in my price range) probably have much the same image circle it looks like I will have to be more careful with composition and lens choice.

What are you trying to do, that you need so much movement? I don't think I've ever used up the image circle of my convertible Symmar.

[AJ Edmondson]

Are you using a filter (or any other attachment) on the front of the lens? It can be quite surprising to find out how quickly (when using camera movements) the field of view becomes limited by the restrictions imposed by such an addition. Oversize filters or behind the lens filters take care of that problem easily enough.

[Kevin Crisp]

Whether practical for your image depends what you are photographing, but if you use back tilt you're not using up coverage. You ought to be able to get a bit over 1.5" of front rise straight on.

If you start using front tilt with rise then you can quickly run out as others have suggested.

If you can live with a dimmer ground glass, the 150 g claron covers 5X7 with a lot of room for movement. These seem to be quite reasonably priced. The APO Symmar had a more coverage than the -S lenses and was suggested by Schneider as a 5X7 lens. Not much extra coverage though on 5X7, maybe 1 cm or so of rise.

[ic-racer]

Can you post a picture of how you have your camera set up that you are running out of coverage with that lens?

[Scotty230358]

Thank you all for taking the trouble to reply. Dealing with your questions in order

1. The problem mainly occurs with architecture when I raise the front to get the top of the building in and then use tilt to get a foreground feature in focus. I believe I should use a wider lens and crop the image rather than trying to use as much of the negative as I can.

2. I use 67mm filters attached to a 58/67 step up ring.

3. I hardly ever use back tilt as I read that his can alter size relationships but I may have no alternative when using this lens. As I have a boss screen on my camera a G Claron may well be the answer.

4. Sadly I don't have a picture of my camera set up available at present.

Once again many thanks to you all for taking the trouble to help. I have only been doing LF seriously for 3 years and still consider myself a newbie.

[E. von Hoegh]

Thank you all for taking the trouble to reply. Dealing with your questions in order

1. The problem mainly occurs with architecture when I raise the front to get the top of the building in and then use tilt to get a foreground feature in focus. I believe I should use a wider lens and crop the image rather than trying to use as much of the negative as I can.

2. I use 67mm filters attached to a 58/67 step up ring.

3. I hardly ever use back tilt as I read that his can alter size relationships but I may have no alternative when using this lens. As I have a boss screen on my camera a G Claron may well be the answer.

4. Sadly I don't have a picture of my camera set up available at present.

Once again many thanks to you all for taking the trouble to help. I have only been doing LF seriously for 3 years and still consider myself a newbie.

1 To do that you need a bigger image circle, or you need to use DOF in addition to movements. You can't always get everything sharp, though.

2 Even the stepup ring can intrude at times.

3 In architecture the back must remain parallel to the building. Front movements = focus corrections; back movements = perspective corrections, (as a general rule).

Your Symmar-S is a general purpose Plasmat, they all cover about 70-72 degrees.

[dave_whatever]

If you're using front rise AND applying forward tilt on the front standard then as you've found out this combination will eat up image circle like its going out of fashion. I never hit the limit of my 150mm Symmar-S's coverage in normal use, but I would either be using a little tilt for landscapes, or rise but no tilt for bulidings, so I had no problems.

Short of buying a 150mm lens with a ton more coverage (150mm XL?) you could try just stopping down and careful use of hyperfocal focussing to get your foreground in focus instead of using tilt - then you should be able to devote all your image circle to rise.