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Wednesday, 22 June 2005 |
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Page 3 of 6
The Lenses
With lenses
there are again decisions to be made and trade-offs to be weighed between modern
and vintage designs. The first problem, obviously, is simply covering these
large negatives. Modern plasmat lenses (Symmar, Sironar, Nikkor W) will do the
job starting at focal lengths a little shorter than nominal normal, but these
lenses are huge, heavy, and expensive at 360mm and up. Once again, older products
can prove useful. The venerable Goertz dagor and artar designs are both suitable
for big cameras, widely available in long and very long focal lengths, and are
relatively light and compact compared to modern designs. The dagors win the
coverage contest and are extremely flare-free designs; even lenses so old that
they are uncoated deliver excellent results. Artars have adequate coverage when
used at normal or slightly short focal lengths and give good contrast and flare
character if you choose recent coated samples. Even older lenses like protars
are well worth considering since some offer incredible coverage for ultra-wide
angle work with big cameras. When looking for these, and for dagors, remember
that the slower the maximum aperture of these lenses, the greater the coverage.
The 10 inch Kodak Wide Field Ektar covers the 11x14 or 7x17 format at f/45 with
only moderate illumination falloff. With all of these vintage lenses perhaps
the biggest drawback is that you’ll be stuck with cranky vintage shutters as
well.
Among modern lenses, a universal favorite of big camera users is the Schneider
G-Claron series. Essentially a modern variant of the dagor design, the G-Claron
gains enormous coverage over its published f/22 specifications when stopped
down to f/45 and beyond. The 270mm will cover 7x17, the 305 will do so with
good room for movements, and the 355 will cover 12x20 with an inch of rise and
fall available. The 450mm M-Nikkor covers 12x20 with room to spare, and the
Fuji compact lenses of 360 and 450 focal lengths are suitable for ultra-large
negatives and are indeed light and compact. They are not officially imported
to the US and are therefore more difficult to obtain.
There are important aesthetic
considerations involved in lens selection as well. Good results can be had with
modern and vintage designs, but the character of the images these lenses create
varies greatly. Some photographers who use big cameras to make negatives for
printing in older photographic processes maintain that vintage lenses are needed
to achieve the classic look they want. Other photographers using big cameras
to get the ultimate resolution of contact prints in gelatin silver maintain
that only modern lenses can give them what they want. Even among modern lenses,
there are clear family resemblances within product lines and Schneider, Rodenstock,
Fuji, and Nikkor lenses tend to have their own consistent image formation styles.
It really comes down to personal taste rather than quantifiable data. I use
modern designs (G-Clarons) and classics (Wide Field Ektar, dagor). Sometimes
I choose simply for length and coverage, but sometimes I select a lens for a
particular picture specifically because of its subtle and not easily quantified
imaging characteristics.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 23 June 2005 )
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