Used Nikkor enlarger lens sold for $3000 on e-Bay

[John Koehrer]

No really I do have one (its not in my junk drawer though)
I could sure use some $ for some other gear, do you think if I put my 105mm APO EL NIkkor on ebay it would go for anything close to that?

Notice there was only one bid. Was the starting price $3000? if it was it certainly gives you a great reference.

 

[dougjgreen]

Flare = lessening of contrast in projected image = crap.

Flare-causing light in this situation is BEHIND the lens, not before.

except it's not STRAY light. It's the actual light source that is being projected by the lens. It's either flat diffused light illuminating the image (from a diffuser), or directed light from a condenser that's illuminating the image.

 

[Chazzy]

I keep seeing tantalizing references to that Ctein comparison article on enlarging lenses. Did he find that APO Rodagons were worth the extra expense compared to garden variety Rodagons?

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

except it's not STRAY light. It's the actual light source that is being projected by the lens. It's either flat diffused light illuminating the image (from a diffuser), or directed light from a condenser that's illuminating the image.

The end result remains that reflections inside the lens can degrade image quality.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

except it's not STRAY light. It's the actual light source that is being projected by the lens. It's either flat diffused light illuminating the image (from a diffuser), or directed light from a condenser that's illuminating the image.

Most image flare is actually caused by image light reflecting between the elements of a lens, not stray light. This is true of enlarging lenses as well as camera lenses. Even if you use a compendium shade, for instance, on a camera lens to eliminate all non-image light, a multicoated lens will produce a constrastier image than an identical uncoated lens, because there will be less flare caused by the light reflected from the subject itself. This is why the Zeiss Planar design wasn't really viable before the existence of lens coatings, even though it was theoretically sharper and faster than other extant lens designs--not enough contrast. This is also the reason why protective filters even of excellent quality degrade image quality.

 

[CBG]

except it's not STRAY light. It's the actual light source that is being projected by the lens. It's either flat diffused light illuminating the image (from a diffuser), or directed light from a condenser that's illuminating the image.

Well, there's stray light inside an enlarger too. Consider the light that passes through the neg onto the bellows or other internal surfaces. You want none of that to be redirected as flare onto your printing paper.

Nor do you want, as David Goldfarb notes, internal reflections from lens elements misdirecting any non image-making light onto your paper.

 

[JohnArs]

This Apo turbo mega giga lens is almost useless because the weakest part in enlarging is the paper resolution of around 20-30 linepears mm.
So you will not see a difference on the paper but a huge difference in our moneybag;--))))

All my 6 elements Rodi/Schneiders are good enough for all my papers!

Cheers Armin

 

[Mick Fagan]

Armin, you do have a point, but there is a place for equipment of this kind of resolution.

The most expensive enlarger system I have used was purchased in the very early eighties by a company I worked for at the time. That enlarger and it's two lenses had an approximate initial purchase price of $150,000 AUD. This price did not include installation, which was about 3 weeks work by two technicians. Believe me when I say that for normal enlarging work, it was an eye opener.

At one of our trade houses we had a specially commissioned reproduction system, effectively an enlarger designed for extremely high resolution and colour reproduction for film. This had an effective cost of $250,000 AUD to our firm.

Then we start to get into the expensive stuff, try a little over $1,000,000 AUD for a gallery camera in the eighties.

The lenses on this camera were not available to anyone else, they were manufactured to state of the art standards and the manufacturing I know, was from Germany and Japan.

I believe the glass was manufactured in Japan using the finest sand in the world, I know the lenses were manufactured/assembled in Germany. Testing and adjustments of the lenses was carried out in the USA using LASER spectral analysis (or something that sounded like that from memory) to fine tune the glass.

This camera was specifically designed for the highest quality colour film separations, that money could buy.

Mick.

 

[Softie]

I keep seeing tantalizing references to that Ctein comparison article on enlarging lenses. Did he find that APO Rodagons were worth the extra expense compared to garden variety Rodagons?

There is a lot of signal/noise going on in this thread, but Ctein's book, Post Exposure, contains the relevant enlarging lens testing. His tables don't include the latest Schneider/Rodenstock APO-labeled lenses in the copy I have, which I believe is the second edition.

Partly based on Ctein's work, I chose not to pursue APO Rodagons or APO Componons. You might come to different conclusions based on the same information.

 

[domaz]

Maybe these lenses have some kind of industrial use we don't know of? It seems unlikely there is anyway out there willing to pay that much to enlarge color negatives traditionally anymore. Printed Circuit Board production maybe? Who knows.

 

[Bob-D659]

$3k for a high quality apo lens is almost chump change in the industrial world. Zeiss, Nikon, Olympus, etc want $10-15k for top end microscope objectives, and then there is the high six figure price for the microscope and imaging system to put them on. Don't even ask what the prices are for the class 100 clean room models.

 

[Phillip P. Dimor]

woooow. $3k buys a lot of stuff.