Manual focus Nikkor wide-angles useless for architecture?

[dynachrome]

I have a number of FL and FD lenses to compare. If I first consider standard lenses I can look at early 50/1.4 and 50/1.8 Canon FL models. Over the time from approximately 1964 to approximately 1970 these lenses went through various changes. They changed again in 1970/1971 when the first FD lenses were made. In about 1973 Canon started to use the SC and SSC designations to signify coating types. An exception I have seen photos of is the 300/2.8 FL. It already had the SSC marking. The letter system for coating was abandoned in about 1979 when the New FD lenses were introduced. The coating of the 50/1.8 FD SC does not look anything like the coating of the early or late 50/1.8 FL lenses or even the 50/1.8 FD with the chrome front. The coating of the 50/1.8 New FD also doesn't look anything like the coating of the 50/1.8 Canon lenses which came before the FD SC. The mir.com website does not state that the 50/1.8 New FD has single coating. It simply states that the lens has Spectra Coating. It was Canon's contention that the lenses marked SC had adequate coating based on the optical formulas they used. If I think of the multiple copies of the 28/2.8 FD SC and 50/1.8 FD SC and 135/2.5 FD SC I have, I agree with Canon. I have not seen anything in writing to indicate that these lenses were in fact single coated. They probably have a simpler type of multicoating. If you want to see a very big difference in coating between two Canon lenses with the same optical formula, consider the 200/4. The first version had an odd silver colored ring on part of the barrel. It's rare and I do not have one. The next version is simply marked FD and already had a black front. The third version is marked SSC. In difficult light there is a large difference between these two lenses. The one just marked FD has coating (on the front element anyway) which looks similar to that of the older 200/3.5 FL. It's terrible in backlit situations and has coating not nearly as good as that of the FD SC lenses I have mentioned. As Nikon went through different versions of its manual focus lenses things got murky with their coating designations too. The coating on the 105/2.5 Nikkor P with the all black barrel looks identical to the coating of the later 105/2.5 Nikkor PC. Most C lenses did not stay in production very long before being replaced with the 'K' versions and the 'K' versions were replaced in 1977 by the AI versions. There was very little improvement in coatings between the C, 'K', and AI lenses. They all had good coating. Getting back to the issue of the Canon SC vs. SSC lenses or pre-SC models, it's one thing to read about them on mir.com and another to examine and even use multiple copies of them. Mir.com, like the Canon Camera Museum website, is an interesting resource. In some cases the photos of the equipment are more valuable than the words which accompany them. Some of the information in these sites simply can't be verified. It is contributed by undoubtedly well meaning people but it can't all be accepted as factual. In any case, we both seem to enjoy using Canon manual focus film cameras, lenses and accessories and I hope we can continue to do so for many more years. Happy Holidays.

 

[flavio81]

I wouldn't worry about the coatings at all -- i have somewhere a page from a 1970s magazine where they rank the current lenses in terms of flare resistance and the classic FD 50/1.8 "SC" was one of the ones with lowest, lowest flare (highest flare resistance).

Multicoating only brings significant improvements in lenses of about 8 optical groups or more -- i.e. zoom lenses, extreme wideangles, etc.

Similarly, i have a Nikkor-S 50/1.4 that is single coated (only amber coating) and has very high contrast. Very good lens.