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@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [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...
>
>
