Rollei test literature

Dead Link Removed

Here are some "Modern Photography" articles about the Rolleiflex/Cord. Interesting reading and a good explanation of how to use the LVS system in the E. Comparisons between 4 element Xenar/Tessar and 5 element Xenotar/Planar. Plus one of the articles has a comparison between the 2.8 Planar and 2.8 Xenotar.

This is all in PDF file and can be zoomed a bit to see it easier. I lifted this off another forum.

Dennis

Thanks very much for the articles, Dennis. I have been wondering about this sort of thing but have not done the footwork to track down such old articles. It was quite informative.

I have a 'cord V and a 'flex (not sure of the model yet, but it's a '48 or '49), both with Xenar lenses. I was happy to see the Rome photo as well. It does a great job of showing what a Xenar lens is capable of producing.

In his purchasable article Harry Fleenor, the Rollei repairman, states that because the lenses were assembled by various technicians at the factory, there is variation from lens to lens. I got the impression that sometimes even Planars can be sub-optimal, and that certain Xenars can be exceptional. But he further notes that even "soft" lenses are such in comparison to other lenses in the family of Rollei offerings; compared with other lenses of the time, they are still all outstanding lenses.

I'm not a "gear freak" necessarily. I just want to use my Rolleis for some serious work to be enlarged, typically to 11x14, but perhaps 16x20. With a medium format negative and a crisp lens, I should be happy with the results I get from my gear.

Interesting Dave. I didn't know Harry Fleenor had some purchasable article on it. I do know that I chased after the holy grail extra sharp Rollei lens for many years and went through a lot of cameras looking and testing for it. Of course I never owned a camera any older than a 2.8E3. I did have a T once and didn't use it much but some work I still have from it is etchy sharp. After I sold that camera I got obsessed with trying to find one that was amazingly sharp and I lost count but must have gone through four 3.5F Xenotars, two 3.5F Planars, a 2.8 E3 Xenotar, two 2.8F Planars and two 2.8F Xenotars and finally a 2.8FX HFT Planar.

I still have a 2.8F Xenotar and the 2.8FX Planar plus I sold to two friends a 3.5F Planar and a 2.8F Planar. So I have done lots and lots (unbelievably lots really) of side by side testing for contrast and sharpness at all fstops. I even got a sheet film back that I used on all the cameras (including the FX) so that I could do tests knowing I had flat film and calibrated focus.

My results were amazing in their consistency. I would go to the trouble of putting negs in my enlarger at it's highest and put on a 50mm lens and examine the images in grains through the grain focuser, and still I never found a lens on any camera that was any more or less sharp than every other lens on every other Rollei. My conclusion was that the quality control of the Rollei factory must have been really tightly controlled. I thought when I first started testing the new FX HFT Planar that it was a little sharper but I can't definitely do a test that proves it.

I did however find there is a consistent difference in contrast in the lenses. The single coated 2.8 Xenotars are a tad bit contrastier than the single coated 2.8 Planars. But the new HFT coated Planar is a tad bit contrastier than the 2.8 Xenotar. All these contrast differences are due to inherent flare control and the extra flare control of the multi coating (HFT).

I have recently done some 16x16 enlargements that if you crop an 8x10 out of the middle and show it to someone, they don't know it is an enlargement.