Last week I picked up a Kodak Enlarging Ektar at one of
the local camera sales. I wanted to test it against my
Schneider Componon. The lens was in excellent conditioni and
was a late one. The date code indicates it was made in 1958,
Kodak discontinued consumer lenses sometime in the early or
mid 1960's. Its a 75mm, f/4.5 lens. My main lens for 2-1/4 x
1-1/4 is a Schneider Componon 80mm, f/5.6, one of the older
chrome barrel type. The serial number indicates it was built
sometime between 1961 and 1963. I've had this lens for a
long time and its been quite satisfactory.
My preliminary test was to examine both film grain and
image using a high magnification grain focuser with the
enlarger set for about 8x10 prints. Result: the two are very
close but I think the old Kodak lens may be slightly better.
I was surprized that the effect of diffraction blur is
visible when going from f/8 to f/11. The effect is slight
but unmistakable when examining the grain. The difference is
greater for the Kodak lens suggesting it is has somewhat
higher resolution.
The Schneider lens is of the Plasmat type, six elements
in four groups, the Kodak lens is a Heliar, five elements in
three groups. In principle the Plasmat should have somewhat
better performance at the margins but both lenses are
operating will within their angular field limits.
I can't say I am surprized. The Kodak Enlarging Ektar
series was intended for high quality color printing and the
lenses are very well corrected, its just interesting to see
just how good this old timer is.
More when I do some actual printing with it.
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
============================================================================================================= To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.
