Are ALL 50mm 2.8 enlarging lenses AWFUL @ 2.8?

[chip j]

That's what Barry Thornton seems to say in his "Edge of Darkness". He says that 2.8 is not even good for focusing or burning in.

 

[tedr1]

Depends on the lens, if it is cheap and cheerful that may be true, whereas with the better quality models from the better makers it is not true.

Two things happen with a lens wide open; there is light fall-off towards the periphery of the image (the print gets lighter towards the edges) and the definition may not be as good as it is two stops close down. Even good brands like Rodenstock tell you to use the lens stopped down by two stops for the middle quality lenses and by one stop for the best quality. Do your own tests.

 

[Kawaiithulhu]

Sounds like hyperbole on the focusing comment there...
But even the best of primes get better with a couple stops down.

I haven't read this book yet. Does he suggest using an oversized lens so that you're only using the sweet center area, like a 60mm or 80mm for 35mm negatives? I see that some people prefer that change.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

The answer to your question is no.

 

[removed account4]

i've made prints at 2.8, they were fine. i've also made prints with
a plano convex lens harvested from a folding camera, and no Fstop (talk about hard to focus !)
the prints came out fine ( 11x14 even ! ).
its best to see for oneself if all the hype or threads or texts or
word passed down from generation, or magazine artilces or _______ ( fill in the blank )
is true. often times there is some truth to it, but once in a while it is utter malarky.

even on this forum i have read weird stuff ... like:
to counter act bad fixing and yellow prints soak them in baking soda ( WRONG ! )
or
you can use baking soda as fixer ( WRONG ! )
or
DEKTOL as a film developer gives golfball sized grain ( WRONG ! )

it never hurts to do a simple test / experiment and see for oneself.

 

[Luis-F-S]

Enlarging lenses were typically not designed to be used wide open, but stopped down 1-2 stops. But if you want to use yours wide open, go for it! They're your photos.

 

[summicron1]

the nikkor that i have on my focomat Ic gives consistent wonderful results at all settings.

 

[chip j]

Sounds like hyperbole on the focusing comment there...
But even the best of primes get better with a couple stops down.

I haven't read this book yet. Does he suggest using an oversized lens so that you're only using the sweet center area, like a 60mm or 80mm for 35mm negatives? I see that some people prefer that change.

No, he says 2 stops down for 2.8s. Wide-open, he says, they smear the image.

 

[tomfrh]

My enlarger lenses (and camera lenses) are improved by stopping down one or two stops. A 2.8 always seems a lot sharper at 5.6 than 2.8, both inherent sharpness, and because of more depth of field.

 

[kobaltus]

That's what Barry Thornton seems to say in his "Edge of Darkness". He says that 2.8 is not even good for focusing or burning in.

Chip, you have 35 enlarging lenses for 24x36. Sure some of them are 2,8.

You are the most competent guy for final answer.

 

[Bill Burk]

I remember buying a brand new to the market 50mm enlarging lens with an f/2.8 aperture. The problem that lens design allegedly solved was it helped you avoid reciprocity law failure when making large prints from 35mm color negatives or slides.

I always thought there was a problem with my copy of that lens. Something was wrong with it because I felt I could not make sharp prints from my black and white 35mm negatives.

Maybe that's what Barry Thornton was talking about. They're designed for color... where sharpness is less critical because you have, well... color... to hide the flaws.

 

[Andre Noble]

My Rodenstock Apo Rodagon 50 2.8 is very sharp wide open.

 

[Svenedin]

It's rare that I would want a lens that wide open to make a print for the enlargements I do. The exposure times would be too short. I do use lenses wide open for focussing. I find it easier to compose and use a grain focus finder with a bright image. I haven't noticed any blurring with Schneider Componar 50mm f2.8.

 

[bence8810]

I never enlarge at 2.8 but I always focus wide open.
I had a Condenser enlarger and it was such a treat - even at f11 I got short times with 11x14 prints. Now that I changed to a diffuser model, at 11x14 print size I go above 30 seconds on f5.6. Not sure what'll happen when I need larger prints, I don't like the long enlarging times as I have a higher chance of something causing vibration in the head and a noisy print. Having said that, I would be really reluctant to go below f5.6 but as I never tried it's probably just an imagination on my end that the quality would decrease.

My lens is the New design El-Nikkor 50/2.8 which is a pretty decent lens.

Ben

 

[chip j]

Chip, you have 35 enlarging lenses for 24x36. Sure some of them are 2,8.

You are the most competent guy for final answer.

Good God, w/one health problem after another I haven't had time to test them all! My enlarger light sources are too bright (or my negs too thin) to expose @ 2.8. I've got a dimmer control to hopefully solve that problem (it will w/my Durst, which doesn't have a standard enlarging bulb (which can change color w/a dimmer & so are not so hot for VC printing, I've heard).

 

[Mick Fagan]

I remember buying a brand new to the market 50mm enlarging lens with an f/2.8 aperture. The problem that lens design allegedly solved was it helped you avoid reciprocity law failure when making large prints from 35mm color negatives or slides.

I always thought there was a problem with my copy of that lens. Something was wrong with it because I felt I could not make sharp prints from my black and white 35mm negatives.

Maybe that's what Barry Thornton was talking about. They're designed for color... where sharpness is less critical because you have, well... color... to hide the flaws.

Geez Bill, I’m not so sure about that with regard to colour requiring a lesser designed lens for reproduction of prints.

All reasonably decent enlarging lenses I have used in 35mm land were/are usually f/2.8, and quite wonderful. With B&W they were just as good.

Any colour printer printing critical work, usually will end up using apochromatic (Apo) lenses and know what the magnification factor that each lens is designed for. There really is a noticeable difference using an Apo enlarging lens over an achromatic lens whether you are working in colour or B&W. But working outside the enlarging factor of each lens could possibly be one factor that many people either don’t know about, or remember.

Taking the Rodenstock range of 35mm enlarging lenses it goes something like this.

Rogonar 50mm f/2.8 (4x enlarging design)

Rogonar S 50mm f/2.8 (4x enlarging design)

Rodagon 50mm f/2.8 (10x enlarging design)

Apo-Rodagon 50mm f/2.8 (10x enlarging design)

Rodagon-G 50mm f/2.8 (25x enlarging design)

When you are using 24”x30” colour cut sheet paper and making an enlargement from 35mm to cover that sheet of paper and therefore be slightly cropped, then although the Apo-Rodagon 50mm is a very good lens, using the Rodagon-G 50mm lens is demonstrably better. Sort of like the difference at those magnifications of enlargement, between using glass and glassless negative carriers.

I personally have used the Apo-Rodagon 50mm and the Rodagon-G 50mm lens for colour and B&W enlargements in another life in an industrial photo-lab. The crispness of either of those lenses in B&W compared to a standard Rodagon 50mm lens is certainly there. With colour there is a visible sharpness difference, which really (I believe) is because the three colours are correctly focused.

One day I brought my own Schneider-Kreuznach Componon S 50mm enlarging lens into work for a comparison. The end result was that my lens compared quite closely to the Rodagon 50mm f/2.8, not quite reaching the crispness of either the Apo-Rodagon 50mm or the Rodagon-G 50mm.

One test we did was to enlarge a 35mm negative to 1 metre wide on the 36mm length, which is a 28 x enlargement factor using a glass carrier and a recently serviced DeVere 504 free standing enlarger, meaning it was correctly aligned from top to bottom.

The best lens by far was the Rodagon-G, it really was streets ahead on some aspects. The other three, both Rodagons and my own Schneider Componon S were all close to each other, with none of them showing the crispness and beautiful colour rendition of the Rodagon-G.

We had about 9-10 test sheets lying on the floor and all of us in the darkroom complex (about 12 at that time on that shift), immediately said that three prints were fantastic, the other prints were so so. The best prints were all from the Rodagon-G.

Doing smaller enlargements around the scale of the design of the lesser enlarging lenses, produced some really good crisp colour, as should be expected. These smaller prints were all slightly cropped on 12”x16” paper (one is hanging in my darkroom). The difference between the three lesser lenses and the Rodagon-G was minimal to almost undectable, but could be detected if you looked very hard.

Essentially that test told me something that I hadn’t taken too much notice of, up till then that is. That standard 50mm amateur enlarging lenses from most manufacturers, generally, are designed to enlarge prints up to about 5x7” and not too much more. From then on the next range of enlarging lenses are designed to enlarge prints up to about 12x16” and not too much more. Very specialised and highly corrected Apo designed lenses are designed to enlarge prints to about 24x30” and a bit higher.

The largest prints I can remember doing direct from 35mm film, was done shortly after the release of Kodak Ektar 25 colour negative film. We did life sized colour prints of people, directly after the release of the original 135 Kodak Ektar 25 professional film for Kodak Australasia and an advertising campaign through Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore). Japan was covered by the USA I believe, a lab in Germany did the European prints as far as I know.

We were given the height of the people in the negatives, then we measured their image on the darkroom wall and ensured their image was correct for their height. We used one of our mural enlargers, which was capable of enlarging a 10”x10” negative with the 135 negative taped to the enlarging stage glass. The aforementioned Rodagon-G lens was used and we made the prints on Kodak roll paper from boxes containing 72” wide by 100’ long colour negative print paper.

I don't know for sure, but I would think that lens was used two stops down. Enlarging times somewhere around a couple of minutes, maybe up to five to six minutes for some of the larger people. I think we had one fella who was around 2.1m tall.

Ensuring that a mural print is sharp is reasonably easy, fiddly but easy. Ensuring that part of the image, that person in the image, was correct to the millimetre, with the image as sharp as a tack, now that is sort of difficult. Not impossible, but by golly, when that project had finished, we really were completely over it.

The resulting prints were displayed all over the place with huge emphasis on the fact that these were all enlarged from 35mm film. They certainly looked brilliant, as they should have, as the cost and effort into making these, was mind boggling. Think about 2-3 months of fiddling, on and off, before everyone was happy.

Mick.

 

[gone]

They're all terrible. Just awful. In my bid to assist others here, I will be happy to accept all Nkkor and Minolta Rokkor 50 2.8 lenses for FREE, and dispose of them properly so that no one has to suffer the lousy results from these poorly designed POS lenses.

I think that I understand why Barry's book is called The Edge of Darkness.

 

[Jim Jones]

I've used several El-Nikkor 50mm f/2.8 lenses over the past 45 years, and all were sharp when wide open, although there was illumination loss in the corners. This cleared up by f/4. There was a hint of diffraction limitation when stopped down to f/8 with Tech Pan negatives. I would use a neutral density filter or enlarger lamp dimmer rather than stop down further.

 

[darkroommike]

What's nice about a 2.8 lens is the brightness of the image on the baseboard, makes composition and focusing much easier. And in a pinch, especially in the old days of slower color materials like Ektalor 37 RC you could print at 2.8 if needed. The other nice thing? All enlarging lenses (and I know there are exceptions) benefit from stopping down one of two stops. If you start at f/4 you end up at f/8. If you start at f/2.8 you end up at f/5.6 and your entire lifetime of printing in the darkroom has been halved.

 

[DREW WILEY]

If you use significantly longer than "normal" lenses relative to your given format, it's really only the center part of the optic being used, so you'll have
greater success using it wide open. Of course, enlarging lenses longer than 50mm generally have smaller maximum apertures anyway; but this option might make the difference between optimally stopping down just one stop rather than two. None of this makes sense anyway unless everything
on your enlarger and baseboard is perfectly leveled and centered anyway, plus you are employing a high quality glass carrier, at least in terms of
sharpness. Another plug for longer than normal lenses is that they give better evenness of illumination - you don't need as dense a diffuser or as much corner and edge burning to get things even.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

....Barry Thornton....says that 2.8 is not even good for focusing or burning in.

Sounds kind of rockwellish.

No trouble with focusing at 2.8. At all.

 

[chip j]

How come Leitz never made a 50 2.8? Their 50s are all 4.5s. They must know something!

 

[railwayman3]

I still have my first enlarging lens (a Wray Supar f3.5) tucked away at the back of a cupboard. And I still have some of my early prints made with it on a cheapy WFZO enlarger from Poland), these still look fine even with my more critical standards now-a-days.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I quit using 50's entirely. For 35mm film I will use a 75 f/4 El Nikkor a stop down. It's a fairly worthless MF enlarging lens, but decent at the center.
But I prefer to use my 105 Apo Rodagon N. No big deal, since I mainly shoot fast grainy film in 35mm cameras anyway. When I want immaculate
detail on slower films, I shoot much larger formats.

 

[DREW WILEY]

For one thing, Apo Rodagons aren't ordinary enlarging lenses, and they certainly don't cost the same! For another, even if center sharpness if rather
good wide open with these, I think you'll discover that illumination falloff is significantly improved a stop down. I have used Apo R's wide open for
doing things like enlarging directly onto relatively slow contact papers like Azo, but frankly, with longer than normal lenses relative to format. Azo
is not the most fun product to dodge and burn with if you want edge to edge balanced density. Otherwise, just one more goofy experiment in my past
that I might classify as a mythbuster.