Huge difference between single coated lens vs multicoated?

iamthejeff · Oct 16, 2017

Rather new to LF. I have a Graphic View II with a Graphex 90mm and 135mm lenses. I recently won an auction on a 210mm f/5.6 Schneider-Kreuznach Symmar-S lens. It was sort of an impulse buy because it was quite inexpensive, but after doing some research I found out that the one I bought was a rather early model that only has a single coated lens (SN 12446850). Will there be a drastic difference between this and one of the newer multicoated versions? Should I just avoid pointing it towards the sun?

Sirius Glass · Oct 16, 2017

Single coated lenses are better than uncoated lenses and almost as good as multicoated lenses. Just do not aim into light sources and watch for flares.

iamthejeff · Oct 16, 2017

Thats what I like to hear, thanks

Jarin Blaschke · Oct 17, 2017

I understand that it also depends on how many air-to-glass surfaces the lens design has. An uncoated Dagor will fare much better than a Tessar, for example.

Ces1um · Oct 17, 2017

I thought I had heard single coating lenses were better for black and white, while multicoated were better for colour. I have no idea why this might be and I'm only pulling this "fact" from way in the back of my memory recesses in the old brain so I could easily be mistaken here.

Dan Fromm · Oct 17, 2017

<obscenities deleted>

You folks are splitting very fine hairs.

Ian Grant · Oct 17, 2017

As Dan would say the proof is in the pudding, more literally in his sense "ask the lens" ie try it out.

I was rather sceptical about using coated l(as opposed to Multi coated) lenses for my LF work, but Dan kept suggesting try them. You'll note I don't use the term Single coating because that's a misnomer as many coated lenses have more than one coating and some where effectively Multi coated before the term became a marketing tool with the eiss/Pentax Super Multi Coated Takumars (the coating was Zeiss technology).

In practice non of my coated LF lenses flare, I use a mid 1950;s CZJ 150mm f4.5 T (coated) Tessar in conditions where the MC zoom lenses on my Canon are useless, same goes with my coated Angulon and Super Angulons. I am shooting B&W when I shot E6 with LF I did notice a difference between my coated 65mm Super Angulon and my MC Sironar and Grandagon. The CZJ Tessar is heavily coated with a slight blue bias I wouldn't use it for colour.

Ian

E. von Hoegh · Oct 17, 2017

A Symmar-S is a Plasmat type and has 8 air-glass surfaces, six of them internal. Single coating (post WW2) made this design practical and it became an industry standard for normal-angle lf lenses. Muticoating came along in the mid 1970s as a detail refinement. Using an efficient and properly adjusted compendium lens shade will make far more difference than single vs. multi coating.

Ian Grant · Oct 17, 2017

E. von Hoegh said:
A Symmar-S is a Plasmat type and has 8 air-glass surfaces, six of them internal. Single coating (post WW2) made this design practical and it became an industry standard for normal-angle lf lenses. Muticoating came along in the mid 1970s as a detail refinement. Using an efficient and properly adjusted compendium lens shade will make far more difference than single vs. multi coating.

Again perpetuating the misnomer Multiple coatings i.e. more than one coating per surface go back - I think the Zeiss Patent was before WWII. The very carefully balanced refinements were called Super Multi Coating because most top end lenses were already coated with multiple layers much earlier, the step change in coatings is the mid 1950's.

Ian

E. von Hoegh · Oct 17, 2017

Ian Grant said:
Again perpetuating the misnomer Multiple coatings i.e. more than one coating per surface go back - I think the Zeiss Patent was before WWII. The very carefully balanced refinements were called Super Multi Coating because most top end lenses were already coated with multiple layers much earlier, the step change in coatings is the mid 1950's.

Ian

And I am attempting to distinguish between the first magnesium fluoride single layer coatings which came into widespread use immediately after WW2 (after having been used widely on military optics during the war), and the advanced multilayer coatings termed "multicoating" which came into widespread use in the early-mid 1970s. Zeiss held patents prewar (so did General Electric in the US, [Blodgett and Langmuir]), but that does not necessarily mean that multilayer coatings of any sort were used on consumer items.

Ian Grant · Oct 17, 2017

E. von Hoegh said:
And I am attempting to distinguish between the first magnesium fluoride single layer coatings which came into widespread use immediately after WW2 (after having been used widely on military optics during the war), and the advanced multilayer coatings termed "multicoating" which came into widespread use in the early-mid 1970s. Zeiss held patents prewar (so did General Electric in the US, [Blodgett and Langmuir]), but that does not necessarily mean that multilayer coatings of any sort were used on consumer items.

But that misses out a huge number of well coated lenses from the mid 1950's until Super Multi coating caused most manufacturers to either upgrade or start using the term. I have some US single coated lens and on UK (Kodak) and quite frankly it's poor coating compared to German lenses, my UK 203mm f7.7 Ektar is extremely well coated.

Now it's many of these well coated lenses that we see on the SH market today.

Ian

E. von Hoegh · Oct 17, 2017

Ian Grant said:
But that misses out a huge number of well coated lenses from the mid 1950's until Super Multi coating caused most manufacturers to either upgrade or start using the term. I have some US single coated lens and on UK (Kodak) and quite frankly it's poor coating compared to German lenses, my UK 203mm f7.7 Ektar is extremely well coated.

Now it's many of these well coated lenses that we see on the SH market today.

Ian

Yes, that was my point.

BrianShaw · Oct 17, 2017

Dan Fromm said:
<obscenities deleted>

You folks are splitting very fine hairs.

+1

E. von Hoegh · Oct 17, 2017

BrianShaw said:
+1

Tetrapyloctomy, it matters!

Ian Grant · Oct 17, 2017

E. von Hoegh said:
Yes, that was my point.

The problem is there is a need a term for lenses that are well coated as opposed to single coated bloomed lenses and the later lenses marketed as Multi Coated which came to cover the equivalent of the Zeiss/Pentax Super Multi Coated.

I'd add that the CZJ coatings 1938 onwards were different to the Kodak bloomed lenses, their technology must have been far in advance.

Ian

AgX · Oct 17, 2017

To my understanding, unless it is an error of the publishing department of Canon, until the end of the FD series they gave three lenses only a single-layer coating.

Sirius Glass · Oct 17, 2017

Ces1um said:
I thought I had heard single coating lenses were better for black and white, while multicoated were better for colour. I have no idea why this might be and I'm only pulling this "fact" from way in the back of my memory recesses in the old brain so I could easily be mistaken here.

Before color film, uncoated lenses did not always focus all the colors at the same place. The advent of color film brought coatings and better designed lenses.

E. von Hoegh · Oct 17, 2017

Sirius Glass said:
Before color film, uncoated lenses did not always focus all the colors at the same place. The advent of color film brought coatings and better designed lenses.

Achromats have been around for a very long time. I've used many old pre-coating lenses for color transparency - rapid rectilinear, Dagors, Protars, 2 element achromats (on color print) in box cameras etc with no trouble whatever.

Alan Gales · Oct 17, 2017

I shoot 8x10 b&w and most if not all my lenses are single coated.

Just make sure that you shade any lens that you use. You don't have to get fancy either. I use a dark slide. Some use their hat.

summicron1 · Oct 17, 2017

I've been shooting a lot lately with some uncoated tessars on a 90-year old Rollei stereo camera and am quite pleased with the result. I suppose a rigorous test looking for flare and so forth would show issues, but they render a very pleasing, and extremely sharp, image.

As the man up above says -- you are splitting very fine hairs. Buy the best lens you can afford, learn how to use it and don't sweat niceties like what sort of coatings it has or whether it has this element configuration or that one or (like Leica folk) was made in Solm or Wetzlar or Canada ... you, not the lens will be the deciding factor on whether your images are any good.

cross-eye viewing sample:

And buy a lens shade.

Dan Fromm · Oct 17, 2017

Sirius Glass said:
Before color film, uncoated lenses did not always focus all the colors at the same place. The advent of color film brought coatings and better designed lenses.

That's absurd. Achromatisation and coating have nothing to do with each other. You've bought Voigtlaender's marketing nonsense about their post-WW II line of lenses whose names had the prefix Color-. Coating didn't fix the pre-war versions' chromatic aberration, redesign did.

Nodda Duma · Oct 17, 2017

Ian Grant said:
As Dan would say the proof is in the pudding, more literally in his sense "ask the lens" ie try it out.

I was rather sceptical about using coated l(as opposed to Multi coated) lenses for my LF work, but Dan kept suggesting try them. You'll note I don't use the term Single coating because that's a misnomer as many coated lenses have more than one coating and some where effectively Multi coated before the term became a marketing tool with the eiss/Pentax Super Multi Coated Takumars (the coating was Zeiss technology).

In practice non of my coated LF lenses flare, I use a mid 1950;s CZJ 150mm f4.5 T (coated) Tessar in conditions where the MC zoom lenses on my Canon are useless, same goes with my coated Angulon and Super Angulons. I am shooting B&W when I shot E6 with LF I did notice a difference between my coated 65mm Super Angulon and my MC Sironar and Grandagon. The CZJ Tessar is heavily coated with a slight blue bias I wouldn't use it for colour.

Ian

Single layer coating and Multi-layer coating are not marketing terms.

Single layer means one 1/4 wavelength layer Magnesium Flouride, with the wavelength usually equivalent to the d line

Multi-layer means, literally, "more than one coating layer" in the optical design industry.

The marketing terms were tied to advances in coating process technology.

See this thread I created discussing AR coatings.

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/the-inside-technical-scoop-on-lens-coating-durability.148890/

AgX · Oct 17, 2017

Sirius Glass said:
Before color film, uncoated lenses did not always focus all the colors at the same place. The advent of color film brought coatings and better designed lenses.

Coatings are not related specifically to colour photography. However they were were applied at consumer optics about the same time consumer colour photography evolved in Europe.

Sirius Glass · Oct 17, 2017

Dan Fromm said:
That's absurd. Achromatisation and coating have nothing to do with each other. You've bought Voigtlaender's marketing nonsense about their post-WW II line of lenses whose names had the prefix Color-. Coating didn't fix the pre-war versions' chromatic aberration, redesign did.

I said "did not always" which means that some did focus all color at the same location. The less expensive cameras tended not to which gave more dispersion along the major axis.

summicron1 · Oct 17, 2017

AgX said:
Coatings are not related specifically to colour photography. However they were were applied at consumer optics about the same time consumer colour photography evolved in Europe.

The ability of a camera/lens to use color film has, itself, been something of a marketing deal -- If you look at Kodak ads from the 40s and 50s they boast of the ability of their cameras to produce either b/w prints, color prints OR EVEN SLIDES!!!!

A lens may be thought of as color corrected if it has enough elements to properly focus most of the spectrum in the same plane -- which would also considerably improve sharpness. Like your basic tessar formula, which predates color photography by several decades.

Beyond that it's all marketing hype. Kodak cameras of the Brownie persuasion, which had a pretty basic plastic lens usually, had a "color" and "b/w" setting on the front which essentially changed a waterhouse stop.

multi coating has its advantages, but i wouldn't go nuts chasing the latest technology. My 60-year old leica lenses work just fine.

Huge difference between single coated lens vs multicoated?

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