Agfa f/4.5, 85mm Solinar comparable to Zeiss Tessar ?

trendland · Apr 10, 2017

For Agfa Solinette users before 1956
the f/4.5, 85mm Solinar was the deluxe option on Isolette II and
Isolette III.

Its based on the Tessar formulation witch some other manufactores used
to their own versions - yust like Agfa
did it here with there Solinar.

It has had a hard double coation -
that meant at that time
( Agfa brochure ) : " Single coation on
each lens side "

I have heard that Agfas Solinar characteristic was not in the near
of the Zeiss Tessar to simular cameras
of that type.

Some say it was the better one.

Has someone of you experiance with both lenses ?

And what does the comparision imply
to the use of color film.

I could imagine that the characteristic
of both lenses on bw film is indeed at
a close range.

But is it the same with color film ?

The sweetspot is on f8 - f11 I would suppose - are the Zeiss Tessars realy
nearly the same?

trendland · Apr 10, 2017

.....forgot the Tessar Type :

- one of the original Carl Zeiss Tessars
of the same period is for example :

Tessar f/3.5, 75mm in use with the
legendary Icoflex.

but these Tessars where build in
other Zeiss Icon cameras of the 50th.

with regards

Ian Grant · Apr 10, 2017

I had an un-coated pre WWII 135mm f4.5 Solinar, it was a typical Tessar type lens, reasonable performance on a par with an un-coated Tessar. After WWII as the Soviet Union and the Communists clamped down on imparts CZJ had big problems getting regular supplies of specialist optical glasses and had issues with some Tessar's losing the Rollei contract to the new West German zeiss, Linhof switched as well.

So some post WWII CZJ Tessar lenses were poor, the design had to be tweaked to use the available optical glasses, but the Solinar was no better than the best.

When it comes to colour it depends on the coating, my 1953/4 CZJ 150mm Tessar is decidedly blue so a warm up filter would be needed. Interesting you say double coating because most post war lenses that we call single coated have more than one coating.

Ian

trendland · Apr 11, 2017

Ian Grant said:
I had an un-coated pre WWII 135mm f4.5 Solinar, it was a typical Tessar type lens, reasonable performance on a par with an un-coated Tessar. After WWII as the Soviet Union and the Communists clamped down on imparts CZJ had big problems getting regular supplies of specialist optical glasses and had issues with some Tessar's losing the Rollei contract to the new West German zeiss, Linhof switched as well.

So some post WWII CZJ Tessar lenses were poor, the design had to be tweaked to use the available optical glasses, but the Solinar was no better than the best.

When it comes to colour it depends on the coating, my 1953/4 CZJ 150mm Tessar is decidedly blue so a warm up filter would be needed. Interesting you say double coating because most post war lenses that we call single coated have more than one coating.

Ian

That is somewhere in the direction I supposed it Ian.

So one can say that the uncoated Solinars before 1950 (read about it that on all Solinars after that time Agfa fitted
them with single coation) - are generaly
comparable with uncoated Zeiss Tessars.

That seems to be reasonable because
all of that lenses from other manufactors
such like Agfa (Voigtländer,Rollei,Leitz,
Schneider-Kreuznach etc.) based on the same original formulation (Tessar) - even as they are
Tessars.

And the possability to do this was given
since 1922 as the Zeiss patent from
1902 expired. (20 years at that time - seems be not so long for Zeiss).

Perhaps they have had 25 years - I am not quite sure now.

And 1922 or 1927 there have been no
coation at all - as we stated before.

So the differences of uncoated Zeiss Tessars to early Agfa Solinars may be
only small.

It should be the same case to other lenses in regard to Leitz, Schneider-Kreuznach.

Even when they have used simular glasses from Schott for example - and
(not forgetting) their mathematics might well have done it too.

Nevertheless should each of this Tessar
Clones have his own charactaristics -
as you mentioned in many interesting
examples Ian.

Thanks for that Ian.

By the time - Agfa mentioned it as "double coation" (for the f/4.5 85mm Solinar) because it has been 3 times more expensive then their Apotars.

I guess it sounds good to the buyer intention in the early 50th.

A multi-layer coation was first realized
some years later with Agfas "Color Solinar" 1958 if I have it correct in mind.

I guess that Agfa therefore has to pay for licences to Zeiss.

Both first patents (single coation,multi-layer coation) belongs to
ZEISS from the mid.30th (1935) and the later 30th (1938-1939) you mentioned it too.

Regarding this Carl Zeiss Lenses with single coation from the beginning 50th - they
should have indeed an effektive better
characteristic - because of the technological advance of Carl Zeiss to that time.
This profit comes to an close advantage
even to Carl Zeiss Jena for many years.

But the early double coation by Agfa was
a "normal single layer coation on each
side of the lens glass"
A little bit deviously method - to name
a single layer coation in this was.

with regards

flavio81 · Apr 11, 2017

Solinars have nothing to envy to Zeiss Tessars.

For the 1950s, probably the best tessar-formula lenses were the Voigtlander Color-Skopar and the Scheider Xenar, not the Zeiss Tessar.
The Agfa Solinar is perfectly comparable.

Don't worry about coatings, these are 3-group lenses, as long as most of the surfaces are coated, the lens will perform just fine.

BTW Agfa had the following levels of lenses:

Agfa Agnar -- 3 element, cheap
Agfa Apotar -- 3 element using improved glass types
Agfa Solinar -- 4 element, the "premium" or "top" lens for Agfa except for 35mm where the top was:
Agfa Solagon -- 6 element double gauss

BTW Agfa has its own patent on the Solinar and on the Solagon; so even if it had to pay licenses to Zeiss, the computation itself has been done by Agfa.

trendland · Apr 11, 2017

flavio81 said:
Solinars have nothing to envy to Zeiss Tessars.

For the 1950s, probably the best tessar-formula lenses were the Voigtlander Color-Skopar and the Scheider Xenar, not the Zeiss Tessar.
The Agfa Solinar is perfectly comparable.

Don't worry about coatings, these are 3-group lenses, as long as most of the surfaces are coated, the lens will perform just fine.

BTW Agfa had the following levels of lenses:

Agfa Agnar -- 3 element, cheap
Agfa Apotar -- 3 element using improved glass types
Agfa Solinar -- 4 element, the "premium" or "top" lens for Agfa except for 35mm where the top was:
Agfa Solagon -- 6 element double gauss

BTW Agfa has its own patent on the Solinar and on the Solagon; so even if it had to pay licenses to Zeiss, the computation itself has been done by Agfa.

Oh - that is a knew fact to me - that Agfa
have had their own patents to their Solinar.
So as a conclusion of that all they were
fully comparable with Zeiss.
I supposed that they made their own
coation with the use of Zeiss patents.

But probably Agfa had their own technology for coatings in the beginning
50th.

And as the original ZEISS patents were
oft of order it is logical that agfa get own
neue patents for their (realy expensive )
Solinar.

with regards

trendland · Apr 11, 2017

......and coming back to Voigländer,
indeed they made, with their Skopars,
the most outstanding performance in
the 50th.
And due to this they established the highest prices for a couple of years.
Reasonable for the best quality should
be most in the fact that Voigtänder mathematics reformuated their Tessar
Clones, so as many others have done it -
but Voigländer die it in the perfekt war
oft this time.

with regards

trendland · Apr 11, 2017

Sorry Smartphone Trubble :

"but Voigländer did it in the perfect way
of this time"

with regards

Ian Grant · Apr 11, 2017

flavio81 said:
Solinars have nothing to envy to Zeiss Tessars.

For the 1950s, probably the best tessar-formula lenses were the Voigtlander Color-Skopar and the Scheider Xenar, not the Zeiss Tessar.
The Agfa Solinar is perfectly comparable.

Don't worry about coatings, these are 3-group lenses, as long as most of the surfaces are coated, the lens will perform just fine.

The very best Tessar formulae in the 1950's were Carl Zeiss, Oberkochen, for Linhof and Rollei as well as Zeiss Ikon themselves.

I have 3 modern (post WWII) Xenars and a CZJ f4.5 150mm T (coated) Tessar and the 1953/4 Tessar is a superb lens very sharp at f22, just as good as my very late production (2000/1 assembly) 150mm f5.6 Xeanr which is supposedly to be the ultimate Tessar design.

It's not so much the lens design though that changes it's the coatings, my 150mm CZJ Tessar is very well (heavily) coated but has a distinct blue tinge, my CZ f4.5 150mm Linhof (Oberkochen) lens (1955) is only a year later but excellent modern colour friendly coatings, a Color Skopar is no better.

This is a few of my Tessar & type lenses, I've used many of them. The middle top row lens is the Solinar. uncoated, which I sold early this year as I only bought it for the shutter very cheaply, however I didn't want to split it. They span almost a decade in their age.

Coating makes a significant difference with Tessars.

Ian

flavio81 · Apr 11, 2017

trendland said:
But probably Agfa had their own technology for coatings in the beginning
50th.

In the '50s there were no secrets to (single) coatings, practically ALL manufacturers coated their lenses, even 'obscure' ones like Steiner (Bayreuth), Daiichi (Japan), and of course the typical ones: Schneider, Rodenstock, Agfa, Zeiss, Zeiss, Leitz, Canon, Nikon, Asahi Optical, Kodak, the list goes on and on and on.
In holland the lens factory De Oude Delft offered the service of coating your (uncoated) lens. All of this in the 50s.

They are usually magnesium fluoride coatings done by deposition in a vacuum.

trendland · Apr 12, 2017

flavio81 said:
In the '50s there were no secrets to (single) coatings, practically ALL manufacturers coated their lenses, even 'obscure' ones like Steiner (Bayreuth), Daiichi (Japan), and of course the typical ones: Schneider, Rodenstock, Agfa, Zeiss, Zeiss, Leitz, Canon, Nikon, Asahi Optical, Kodak, the list goes on and on and on.
In holland the lens factory De Oude Delft offered the service of coating your (uncoated) lens. All of this in the 50s.

They are usually magnesium fluoride coatings done by deposition in a vacuum.

Yes of cause - I forgot this some times - if the patent of Zeiss is from 1935 other
manufacturers like Schneider-Kreutznach,Leitz,Voigtländer did have the capabilities and the resources for intensive investigations.They might have
the technology for their own perhaps only month later.
But ZEISS was first in 1935 - so from today it seems that Zeiss was alone for some years.

Sure in the 50th ( 15 years later ) coation was not hightech anymore.

Hightech caution - today with nano particles from Nikon and Canon - I thought about this at first.

Nano Particles?

Perhaps one could say nano still exist
in the 30th.

Because magnesium fluorides in a gas
should be quite smaler than one could imagine.

And under the condition of a vacuum ?

Then may become "Nano Particles" too.

But today "Nano" is a populare therm.

In the 30th nobody know about it.

with regards
.

trendland · Apr 12, 2017

Ian Grant said:
The very best Tessar formulae in the 1950's were Carl Zeiss, Oberkochen, for Linhof and Rollei as well as Zeiss Ikon themselves.

I have 3 modern (post WWII) Xenars and a CZJ f4.5 150mm T (coated) Tessar and the 1953/4 Tessar is a superb lens very sharp at f22, just as good as my very late production (2000/1 assembly) 150mm f5.6 Xeanr which is supposedly to be the ultimate Tessar design.

It's not so much the lens design though that changes it's the coatings, my 150mm CZJ Tessar is very well (heavily) coated but has a distinct blue tinge, my CZ f4.5 150mm Linhof (Oberkochen) lens (1955) is only a year later but excellent modern colour friendly coatings, a Color Skopar is no better.

This is a few of my Tessar & type lenses, I've used many of them. The middle top row lens is the Solinar. uncoated, which I sold early this year as I only bought it for the shutter very cheaply, however I didn't want to split it. They span almost a decade in their age.

Coating makes a significant difference with Tessars.

Ian

Beginning to become a little bit jelly by looking to this here.
Because I am up to now only equiped
with 35mm and 6x6,6x7,6x9.

Thinking to 4x5inch I can not find the
camera I would like - thoughs often are:
"Never mind - 4x5 is only a little more
than the double of 6x9 because 9x12 is
the exact double."

Because I currently want to have a new one - 4x5 cameras (new build ) are affordable.

But a good lens by rodenstock or Schneider Kreuznach - have seen the
the price lists last year?

Often thought about an old lens for the first beginning - but
I am not very familliar with that stuff.

The fact in regard of this theme is that
I have some 13x18 Kodak E6 Films.

Color is absolute discontinued on13x18
but bw seems to be fine to the next few years.

Now I am the owner of this one Solinar
and it is in perfekt condition.The compur mal es little trouble but that no problem
at aĺl.

I am not shure - is the image circle of
this f/4,5 85mm great enought, when it
will be mounted on a plate - for 5x7 ?

Oft example Shen-Hao do have some
5x7 cameras with adaptered 4x5 film-cases.

4x5inch film sheeds I have very lots of.

You use a 135mm lens on 13x18 camera (I guess because can't identify this type
of camera right now)

So - 85mm should wirk in it too - am I wright with my thoughts ?

The bellow draw extentions are at the
min. 90 mm and max. 480 - 610mm

with regards

trendland · Apr 12, 2017

Ian Grant said:
The very best Tessar formulae in the 1950's were Carl Zeiss, Oberkochen, for Linhof and Rollei as well as Zeiss Ikon themselves.

I have 3 modern (post WWII) Xenars and a CZJ f4.5 150mm T (coated) Tessar and the 1953/4 Tessar is a superb lens very sharp at f22, just as good as my very late production (2000/1 assembly) 150mm f5.6 Xeanr which is supposedly to be the ultimate Tessar design.

It's not so much the lens design though that changes it's the coatings, my 150mm CZJ Tessar is very well (heavily) coated but has a distinct blue tinge, my CZ f4.5 150mm Linhof (Oberkochen) lens (1955) is only a year later but excellent modern colour friendly coatings, a Color Skopar is no better.

This is a few of my Tessar & type lenses, I've used many of them. The middle top row lens is the Solinar. uncoated, which I sold early this year as I only bought it for the shutter very cheaply, however I didn't want to split it. They span almost a decade in their age.

Coating makes a significant difference with Tessars.

Ian

First thought was : "wista" but some
weeks ago a photo student comes with an older 4x5 I asked him: " Oh.... thats an older wista45 - isn't it"

Puh - it was not so - what a blame.

So I doubt - NEVER THE SAME MISTAKE
TWICE!

In the other hand - FIRST IDEA IS ALLWAYS CORECT!

Is this a Wista45 on your
Photo Ian ?

with regards

flavio81 · Apr 12, 2017

trendland said:
Yes of cause - I forgot this some times - if the patent of Zeiss is from 1935 other
manufacturers like Schneider-Kreutznach,Leitz,Voigtländer did have the capabilities and the resources for intensive investigations.They might have
the technology for their own perhaps only month later.
But ZEISS was first in 1935 - so from today it seems that Zeiss was alone for some years.

I think also Kodak (Eastman Kodak) had them in the '30s, but they kept it secret.
They also had VERY advanced glass compounds in the '30s which they also kept secret for the military. Marco Cavina's website explains at length about this.

Ian Grant · Apr 12, 2017

trendland said:
First thought was : "wista" but some
weeks ago a photo student comes with an older 4x5 I asked him: " Oh.... thats an older wista45 - isn't it"

Is this a Wista45 on your Photo Ian ?

Wrong era, it's an Ihagee Zweiverschluss Duplex 9x12 camera with a CZJ f3.5 13.5cm Tessar, the Duplex indicates a choice of the Focal plane shutter or Compur.

I have a Wista 45DX which has been my main camera for 30 years

Ian

Prest_400 · Apr 12, 2017

flavio81 said:
I think also Kodak (Eastman Kodak) had them in the '30s, but they kept it secret.
They also had VERY advanced glass compounds in the '30s which they also kept secret for the military. Marco Cavina's website explains at length about this.

Well, the Kodak Ektar 100mm f3.5 mounted in the Wartime Medalists says quite a bit about their capabilities. Googled now and it is a Heliar type. Lens coatings didn't become mainstream until post war IIRC.
I may guess that if Medalists weren't as ergonomically... peculiar and shot 120 instead of 620; there might be potential for a cult following.

Have a Rolleicord V with a Xenar on the mail and am eager to use it and try. Will embrace its qualities! Tessar types are said to be sharp in center but not so at the corners until f8.

flavio81 · Apr 12, 2017

Prest_400 said:
Well, the Kodak Ektar 100mm f3.5 mounted in the Wartime Medalists says quite a bit about their capabilities. Googled now and it is a Heliar type. Lens coatings didn't become mainstream until post war IIRC.
I may guess that if Medalists weren't as ergonomically... peculiar and shot 120 instead of 620; there might be potential for a cult following.

Have a Rolleicord V with a Xenar on the mail and am eager to use it and try. Will embrace its qualities! Tessar types are said to be sharp in center but not so at the corners until f8.

Hola Prest,

If your Ektar has the circled "L" logo, then it's "Lumenized", which is Kodak slang for "coated" (single coated).

Medalist is a camera I would love to have.

trendland · Apr 12, 2017

Ian Grant said:
Wrong era, it's an Ihagee Zweiverschluss Duplex 9x12 camera with a CZJ f3.5 13.5cm Tessar, the Duplex indicates a choice of the Focal plane shutter or Compur.

I have a Wista 45DX which has been my main camera for 30 years

Ian

Yes - shame on me again - :-(

.......it looks indeed littly different to Wista - but I don't cared about it to
a second time

Back to my reply : The Solinar I have
should work pretty well on 5x7 as I
am able to mount it to the correct plate
for shen hao?

And as we refer it would be
( the Solinar ) not so bad in bw and
perhaps with color film too ?

with regards

Prest_400 · Apr 12, 2017

flavio81 said:
Hola Prest,

If your Ektar has the circled "L" logo, then it's "Lumenized", which is Kodak slang for "coated" (single coated).

Medalist is a camera I would love to have.

No Medalist here. However I did read about them. I have a Fuji 6x9 and during search it was amusing to find that in 1940s there was an equivalent machine in capabilities.

Tessar types IIRC were a good design compromise, at least what Paul Rudolph found as the Planar was unusable without coating at the time.
I am currently quite entretained with the Rolleiflex literature and Tessar types are found better in select occasions. More contrasty for one, equally sharp stopped down on some samples.
Color rendition would be related with the design and coatings, Tessar comes advantesgous vs more complex designs

flavio81 · Apr 12, 2017

Prest_400 said:
No Medalist here. However I did read about them. I have a Fuji 6x9 and during search it was amusing to find that in 1940s there was an equivalent machine in capabilities.

Tessar types IIRC were a good design compromise, at least what Paul Rudolph found as the Planar was unusable without coating at the time.
I am currently quite entretained with the Rolleiflex literature and Tessar types are found better in select occasions. More contrasty for one, equally sharp stopped down on some samples.
Color rendition would be related with the design and coatings, Tessar comes advantesgous vs more complex designs

It all depends on lens speed. Assuming a "normal" lens (angle of view approx. 43°):

f4.5 can be done with very good quality using 3 elements (triplet lens)
f3.5 with 4 elements (tessar, etc)
f2.8 with 5 elements (xenotar type)
f2.0 with 6 elements

On the rolleiflex, there were f3.5 versions some with tessar (4 elements), others with planar (5 elements in this case).

5 elements was already overkill for just a f3.5 speed, that's why the tests out there don't report a big improvenent over the tessar.

Ian Grant · Apr 13, 2017

trendland said:
Back to my reply : The Solinar I have
should work pretty well on 5x7 as I
am able to mount it to the correct plate
for shen hao?

And as we refer it would be
( the Solinar ) not so bad in bw and
perhaps with color film too ?

with regards

An 85mm f4.5 Tessar type lens won't cover 5"x7", it won't even cover 4"x5", you could use it with a 120 6x7 roll film back on a Shen Hoa.

Ian

trendland · Apr 13, 2017

That is a great pity to me because I
love this Solinar more and more.

I remember that I was a little confused
when I have had a first look to Schneider-Kreuznach last year.

They listed their large format lenses with different image circles and I could not
see a realy logical correlation due to the
focal lengths.

But it is a therm due to the construction - as on yours.

trendland · Apr 13, 2017

So I was wrong by my supposion :

"If a Solinar f/4.5 135mm works to
4x5 a f/4.5 85mm will do this
job as wide-angeled too - and perhaps
with 5x7".

Shure one could see this first regarding
the focal length of your f/4.5 135 - it is a
typical standard length to 4x5.

Shen hao have a lot of possabilitys when
one would like different formats (with the correct lenses )

But 6x7 makes not so much sense to me.
Because I have it.

6x12 panoramic with 120 would
be realy nice because of cheap film.

Shen hoe offeres this for 4x5 also.

Ok - it lookes like so - I have to investigate in Schneider-Kreuznach.

The prices for brand new lenses are
moderate in comparission to Rodenstock.

It depends to the lens.

Zeiss is a little bit more expansive if I
remember it correct - depending to the
lens too.

But you would agree with me that a new
Schneider-Kreuznach has a phantastic
characteristic for a modern lens and will
be absolute comparable to modern
Zeiss - I suppose.

with regards

Nodda Duma · Apr 13, 2017

What a great discussion.

Tessars definitely benefited in the 1950s from the introduction of the new glass types (LaK-9, etc) with higher index and lower dispersion, as well as MgF2 coatings that came out of progress made for WW2.

Of course, we know that lower dispersion improved color correction. However, another subtle detail is that higher index (1.7 and higher) allowed for shallower curvature on lens surfaces. This had two benefits: 1) loosening of fabrication tolerances to meet a certain level of performance meant that statistically the quality of a production run was improved. 2) the shallower surfaces meant shallower incident angles and an improvement in optical transmission at the air-glass interface (coating transmission efficiency decreases with increasing incident angle).

I want to say that some of the optical design companies also began using the mainframe computers of the time to perform ray trace calculations and rudimentary design optimization, so you see a jump in imaging performance in the 1950s as well. However I'm not sure if Zeiss was doing this. The East German office certainly was not.

However, the new glass types and coatings also meant the decline in use of Tessars, Cookes, etc designs for normal lenses in favor of the inarguably superior performing Double Gauss design family going into the 1960s. The Japanese in particular (you could probably count the key Japanese designers on one hand) seemed to latch onto the double gauss as a preferred design.

flavio81 · Apr 14, 2017

Nodda Duma said:
What a great discussion.

Tessars definitely benefited in the 1950s from the introduction of the new glass types (LaK-9, etc) with higher index and lower dispersion, as well as MgF2 coatings that came out of progress made for WW2.

Of course, we know that lower dispersion improved color correction. However, another subtle detail is that higher index (1.7 and higher) allowed for shallower curvature on lens surfaces. This had two benefits: 1) loosening of fabrication tolerances to meet a certain level of performance meant that statistically the quality of a production run was improved. 2) the shallower surfaces meant shallower incident angles and an improvement in optical transmission at the air-glass interface (coating transmission efficiency decreases with increasing incident angle).

I want to say that some of the optical design companies also began using the mainframe computers of the time to perform ray trace calculations and rudimentary design optimization, so you see a jump in imaging performance in the 1950s as well. However I'm not sure if Zeiss was doing this. The East German office certainly was not.

However, the new glass types and coatings also meant the decline in use of Tessars, Cookes, etc designs for normal lenses in favor of the inarguably superior performing Double Gauss design family going into the 1960s. The Japanese in particular (you could probably count the key Japanese designers on one hand) seemed to latch onto the double gauss as a preferred design.

Jason,

You need to open a thread on lens designs' improvemets history!!

Voigtlander was the first German manufacturer to have a computer, a Zuse. i've read that the other German companies initially rented Voigtlander's computer.

Fuji was probably the first to have an electronic computer. The first electronic computer in japan was built by Fuji, the FUJIC, year 1956 i think, made explicitely for optical computations.

Nikon (Nippon Kogaku) had a Zuse computer, don't know what year, though.

From the 1960s onwards, Canon focused on electronic calculator production (besides cameras), so I wouldn't be surprised that they built their own computer at some point in time.

As for gauss and Japanese designs, actually on the late 40s and early 50s most japanese normal lenses were Sonnar type. Apparently it was the Canon Serenar 50/1.8 the first successful japanese double gauss.

There is an EXCELLENT website on early japanese and German (1950s) 35mm lenses, "taunus reiter.", most of it in German. The author, a German, has a very strong (and substantiated) pro-japanese bias:

links:

http://www.klassik-cameras.de/Canon_RF_e.html#SONNAR_und_PLANAR

http://www.klassik-cameras.de/FastLenses_en.html

Agfa f/4.5, 85mm Solinar comparable to Zeiss Tessar ?

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