I've used the Xenotar on my C a lot. Never made me wish for another lens Sent from my iPhoneOn Dec 4, 2009, at 9:16 AM, "Stephen Attaway" <stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote:
I do love my 2.8 Planar, but lets not disparage the Xenotar. Both are wonderful vintage lenses.I don't have a Xenotar to make a detailed comparison, but I am very familiar with the Xenar and Tessar. Both the older lenses draw 'like a tessar' - the center is sharp wide open, the edges don't come up until you are well stopped down. Great plasticity, or roundness to the transition between sharp and unsharp, that combined with the perfect Gaussian blur of the out of focus parts of the image gives you that classic f4 windowlight portrait. As Herbert Keppler said in Modern Photography 50 or so years ago 'a good Tessar takes some beating' - nearly every professional photo taken from the mid- thirties to the mid 50s was taken with a tessar formula lens.I love working with tessars, but prefer the Planar. I think the Planar gives an image that keeps most of the good things from the Tessar (plasticity, fine gradation of tonality) but adds transparency and clarity to detail, especially shadow detail - partly because I suspect the Planar's built in uv filtering is better than the separate uv filter I use on my Xenar. And the Planar is better in the corners opened up, although still not sharp corner to corner.So I would put the Planar/Xenotar in a separate class than the Tessar/Xenar. Don't know about the recomputed Tessar with a Latheneum element in the 'T'. I can't stand cameras with coupled evs shutters...so I stick with my Rolleicord IV with its coated Xenar.From: Sanders McNew Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2009 7:38 PM To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxSubject: [rollei_list] Heliar, Sonnar, Planar [WAS Re: off topic rants]Okay so to pick up on Peter's query, let me expand it into territory not exactly on-topic, but nonetheless near and dear to the hearts of many assembled here. We all love our Planars. I am also smitten with the Heliar in my Medalist, and the Sonnars in my Teles are to die for. (The Sonnars in the Nikkor and Zeiss LTMs are pretty spiffy too.) Which is best? <Insert evil grin here.> Which do you prefer and what do you see as the strengths of each? On Dec 3, 2009, at 1:07 AM, FreeLists Mailing List Manager wrote: Peter K. wrote:Here, here. And why Zeiss Planars are better than Schneiders Xenoslobs.On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 4:34 PM, <stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Enough, already! >> Lets get back to talking about the 'T' meter and other stuff that really> matters... > >