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Why Did Schneider Allow Schneideritis to Happen?

Franklee

Member
Joined
Dec 12, 2025
Messages
49
Location
Sonoma County, California
Format
35mm
Wondering why, once their lenses started displaying Schneiderist regularly (in the 1970s I am guessing) they didn't change their build methods and materials to prevent it from happening? I understand that it magically has absolutely no effect on anything and I'm willing to accept that but when a $2500 20-year old Schneider 110mm XL has snowflakes inside it... Why the heck didn't change the paint!?
 
Franklee said:
Schneiderist
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In the thread title I've changed it to "Schneideritis" for better recognition.

mshchem said:
This took decades to show up.
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I that pretty much explains it. By the time it shows up:
1: it was too late to change manufacturing procedures and materials
2: the lens would beyond any reasonable service lifetime anyway, so it would only be relevant for a second hand market
3: it's harmless, so who cares to begin with.
 
I don't really think manufactures speculate too much about product life decades after their products have been discontinued.
 
Yeah but I'm sure it was happening in to 1960s lenses in the 70s. Yet even late 1990s lenses still are doing it. Seems like they must have noticed.
 
As said above, they simply not have cared enough to do anything about it.
Perhaps they did do something and it didn't help sufficiently.
Perhaps they intended to do something but found it wasn't feasible as the solutions had drawbacks that defeated the purpose.

It's one of those things that 'just is'.
 
Nihilists! F*** me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
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Setting reductio ad absurdum aside, there's a divide between things that are worth worrying about and things that aren't. Where you draw that line depends on loads of factors. In this case, I would reason:
* There's nothing we can do about it
* It has no practical impact of any concern
* It's exceedingly unlikely we will ever be able to produce a reliable answer to the question "why"
At that point I'd say "stop worrying and love the bomb."

And that concludes movie classics class for today, kids!
 
i love Scneideritis--it gives me discounts on great lenses because people are afraid of it..
 
Issues with my Schneider lenses? No problem...I have these [useless documents] ...Ha ha...

 
abruzzi said:
i love Scneideritis--it gives me discounts on great lenses because people are afraid of it..
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Hear, hear! There's no reason to fret about Schneideritis — unless it's VERY severe, it will have absolutely no impact on your photography. Zero. Less fussing and more making photographs, please.
 
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It was all a conspiracy to create a funny-sounding word.
 
It's an engineering problem that may not be easy to solve.

The issue will be related to time, and environmental storage conditions. The time factor in this case is in decades. If the issue first became noticed in the 60's, I'm sure they would have tried to fix this. In order to do that, they would have tried other paints or coatings, hoping to find a good one that would last indefinitely. Unfortunately, this creates a new problem, in that you'll need to come up with a test that will give you a reliable prediction of the long term performance. They can't wait decades to do the test, so they need to come up with an "accelerated" test for this that could be completed in months. In industry, this is done all the time, but it's not always possible to come up with a reliable accelerated test, and you won't really know how good your test was until the full time has actually passed.

Accelerated testing usually involves changing some environmental factor dramatically, in order to reduce the time for the defect to occur. You can see where this is going. How do you make an accelerated test if you don't really know what factors affect the problem. It's another educated guess you have to make. All the testing in the world doesn't help, if you're not testing the right thing. That's just the way it goes sometimes.
 
mshchem said:
In Germany they refer to the lens issue as Fahrvergnügen.
True !
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Interesting if true. Fahrvergnügen means driving pleasure and featured in VolksWagen ads.

What were you thinking of?
 
Lenses other than Schneider can also have "Schneideritis," and not all Schneider lenses have it, which suggests that it also depends on environmental conditions or batch variation or some combination that is hard to tease out. I have not seen reports that say "lens X always gets it and lens Y never does"; that may exist but of course it would take looking at a lot of examples.

I also don't know when "Schneideritis" became a common term. I tried searching the Usenet rec.photo groups and got a few references back to 2002 (including one in 2004 where Dan Fromm says his Boyer lenses have it and his Schneiders don't); it was already a well known term then, but I doubt it was in, say, photo magazines from the 80s.

Perhaps most importantly, it's not clear that any of the manufacturers anticipated a future where their professional gear would still be in use 50 years later but it would be hard to find any service for it. If you were a commercial photographer in 1985, you probably were not using much gear that was 50 years old (camera, lens, flash, meter). In 2025, you might be.
 
This is a vague recollection but a long time ago I spoke with the manager of Schneider Optics repair service and was told that it was only a "cosmetic issue" and that's why not covered under warranty or anything to be concerned about.
 
The problem is a bit like the backing paper on 120 film. It seems like it should be easy, but it's a long term issue that potentially has multiple variables. It's obviously been a nightmare for everyone in the industry, and nobody can be certain that the problem is fully understood. We're all crossing our fingers, since the backing paper is definitely not a cosmetic issue.
 
It's not a problem exclusive to Schneider. I developed a bit of it with a Schneider lens I took on a long backpack trip deep into SW canyon country in Autumn where the diurnal temp swings could vary more than 80 degrees F. From almost 90F when the sun was directly overhead in those narrow deep canyons, down to almost zero at night. That's quite a bit of differential expansion/contraction stress on a lens in relation to its mount and cement!
Didn't affect the pictures at all.

No wonder the skeletons of the Anasazi cliff dwellers exhibited signs of serious arthritis by the time they were 40. With my heavy 85 lb pack in mid-day heat I was getting desperate to refill my water jugs, so was jumping pack n' all on the thick ice atop a stream trying to break it. Ended up going over to a shaded canyon wall instead, breaking off icicles. That was when the air temp 20 yards away was already into the mid-80's. Crazy.
 
It’s not clear that temp swings are the cause. Two of my lenses developed it in a temp controlled environment, and not to the same degree.

And, I agree… it has not been noticeable in pictures.
 
I don't think that was the case with all lenses. I have two quite old Schneider Componon enlarging lenses that as far as I know when not in use lived all their time in plastic 'keeper' tubs with sachet's of silica gel. One is a 50mm F4.5 and the other a 80mm f5.6. They have perfectly clear glass with nothing flaked off inside or haze/fungus. The only problem being the click-stops are not very distinct
 
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