Zeiss Apo Planar 80cm

iakustov

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Has anyone used Zeiss Apo Planar 80cm f/10 barrel lens and can comment on performance stopped down (f/64)? My main intention is enlargements from 5"x7" film up to 16''x20''.

I could not find much info on the internet, 6 lens symmetric design, 110mm mounting thread - this is all I know.

Thanks
 

Nokton48

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I own a barrel 59cm Zeiss Apo Planar and it's a keeper. I once showed it to optical expert Ron Wisner and he said to me "Worth Every Single Penny". You are lucky to find such a great lens, they are not common
 

DREW WILEY

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A more common choice, yet superbly corrected, would be a 760/11 Apo Nikkor barrel lens. I assume it would cover 16X20, since the 360 version easily covers 8X10 with movements stopped down. Since most of these barrel lenses were designed for the printing industry to begin with, their official published image circle specs tend to be way more conservative than what applies to general photographic applications.
 
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ic-racer

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There are a number of 210mm lenses on ebay right now.
 
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iakustov

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Nokton48 said:
I own a barrel 59cm Zeiss Apo Planar and it's a keeper. I once showed it to optical expert Ron Wisner and he said to me "Worth Every Single Penny". You are lucky to find such a great lens, they are not common
Click to expand...

OK, I guess you use it with Sinar shutter (if I remember correctly). I am still thinking of buying it as the seller does not seem to have a retaining ring, and I will have to adopt it to Linhof kardan lens board.
I know there is a possibility to fit sinar-copal shutter with linhof kardan board, but I dont have this shutter and thought about using a cap with few seconds exposure.


I know there are also Apo Ronar in barrel in similar focusing range, but I was more interested in the "Zeiss" look. I don't need huge image circle, I intend to use it with 5x7 film so only interested in the center of the IC.
I have not had a LF lens from Zeiss before, only used those in Hasselblad system. I thought about 75mm and 53mm Biogons - how they perform compared to 75mm grandagon-n and 55mm apo grandagon (I own both), apart from IC and multicoating.

ic-racer said:
There are a number of 210mm lenses on ebay right now.
Click to expand...

Did you mean Zeiss 210mm? I don't know if Zeiss ever produced planars in that focusing, I know only before War Tessars..
 

Nokton48

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At F64 you are at a "pinhole" aperture so diffraction will likely be a limiting factor as far as resolution is concerned.

Using your cap as a shutter will work well but many have adapted the Sinar shutter to other camera types
 

Nicholas Lindan

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The Zeiss Apo-Planar 80cm is a process lens.

80cm is 32". A process camera for that lens will probably have 2.4m/8ft or more of bellows draw. On a view camera you are going to need ~120cm/48"/4ft of bellows unless you are confining yourself to taking pictures of distant mountains.
 

Nokton48

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8x10 Sinar Norma Long Apo Ronar 2 by Nokton48, on Flickr

My longest lens currently is a 790mm F14 Rodenstock Apo Ronar, which I picked up from Jim Andracki at Midwest Photo for 200 Bucks. That was my deal steal for that year Here my 8x10 Norma has the 520mm f14 Apo Ronar which requires less bellows. The Norma is an infinitely extendable "Construction Unit" design
 
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iakustov

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OK, did not know it was designed as a process lens. Interestingly, it seems to cost more than apo ronar or apo nikkors.
Bellows draw is not an issue for me. I intended to use it at infinity though.
 

Nokton48

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It should cost boku way more. Major problem is no flange, I would be afraid to glue it in. Needs reinforcement. Think "boat anchor" weight
 

DREW WILEY

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No it shouldn't, Nokton. Lenses like used Apo Nikkors are relatively common at bargain prices today because they were once considered THE high-quality standard by the printing industry here on the West Coast, and were widely used, but were quite expensive when new. Nikon was at the forefront of this category of optics. Once most serious process cameras went out of service, when drum scanners came of age, then there was no longer need for the lenses either. And lower-quality applications, like T-shirt silkscreening shops with their "stat cameras" didn't need that kind of lens quality to begin with. The only thing that might be objectionable about Apo Nikkors is that they are distinctly hard-sharp in a manner not conducive to attractive out-of-focus rendering or "bokeh".

The nice thing about the 760 Nikkor per se is that it can be custom fitted into a no.5 Acme shutter if needed. Even though I own one of these particular lenses myself, I don't bother with it because I use the far more convenient Fujinon C 600, with its standard no.3 Copal shutter. The C is infininity corrected, and fine for general purpose work, whereas Apo Nikkors are apo corrected all the way from 1:1 to infinity, stopped down. But wanna do close-ups with a 760? - that lens was cannibalized from a very expensive process camera with a bellows extending up to 22 FEET long!
 
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Nokton48

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But Yes it might, Drew Wiley. When I was young I worked in a color separation house and they had dozens of process cameras most were in storage. They had a clean room with a Hell Scanner several million dollars at the time. One camera they had I swear was as big as a good sized house! For making billboards I always wondered. Apo Nikkors were everywhere in those lovely wooden boxes. Sure deals are around I paid a couple of hundred many years ago for my Apo Planar. But there is not as much around now and the Zeiss name can sometimes justify higher prices nowadays especially with Zeiss collectors. When have you last seen an Apo Planar offered for sale? How many ended up in landfills?

whoops here's one!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Brass-Lens...939882?hash=item3af72bb4ea:g:Ak4AAOSw9gRaCZXi

Yes I want to shoot closeup with my 760mm F14 Apo Ronar. Camera Bellows will be tasked with completing an extra long 4x5 to 5x7 bellows, I never saw any in the old catalogs. That should work for my needs
 
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Nokton48

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Norma Rodenstock Apo-Ronar collection by Nokton48, on Flickr

My 59cm F9 Apo Planar is on the bottom left. A clockmaker friend forward mounted it so it dosen't block the Norma Shutters

Glenn Evans forward mounted the 600mm F9 for me. The 760mm F14 screwed into a stock Norma board I had around fits perfectly
 
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DREW WILEY

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Nokton - My only apo Zeiss process lens is a 360/9. It's not quite in the same league as my Apo Nikkor 360/9 for enlarging use (though it's certainly quite good at that). But it does have way better "bokeh" than my Nikkors, so I have it mounted on a Sinar board for 8X10 film shooting. I still do exposures with this particular lens lenscap-style, so only long exposures are realistic, but someday would like to mount it in a vintage Copal 3S shutter. What I always poked around for in the architectural salvage yards were old process cameras, hoping to find one for $100 or so that still had a 14 inch Trigor lens on it - in other words, toss the camera itself and either keep the lens or sell it for some huge sum. That never happened. But then our job crew was renovating a warehouse where a really beautiful Japanese process camera probably in the 200K range was abandoned. They forklifted it onto a big flatbed lumber truck, brought it to my office, and I cannibalized the lenses and superb pin-registered 40-inch vacuum easel. Then they forklifted the camera back onto the truck and took it to landfill. The bellows was so big one could have hypothetically walked inside it like a tunnel, if it were not a fragile material, and had a track and potential extension of 22ft, just like I already mentioned. It was like seeing the last Brontosaur die. Sad, but I had nowhere to put it.
 
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Nokton48

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Ron told me it really is a pseudo Planar formula (he gave me a full technical readout not all of which I understood when it came to the mathematics). We were eating pizza and drinking beer in the basement of Midwest Photo, we were both invited to purvey their famous B&J Chicago total inventory cleanout, right after it was unloaded in hundreds of messy dirty boxes and cabinets. What a treasure trove!!! Compared to the acutely sharp 45 degree dialyte type designs, by my recollection the Planar bokeh was gorgeous, it was outstanding for 8x10 tight B&W head shots.

Wisner made a humungeous pile of uber rare stuff to take home. Lots of Protars, he could ID nearly every item he looked at
 
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John Earley

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In a previous life I worked for a graphics arts company that had several process cameras. The one I operated for a while had a 750mm or 760mm APO Nikkor if I recall correctly. The other camera had a 1200mm APO Nikkor. That camera had an overhead rail for the copy board to be adjusted. The "body" of the camera was a dark room with the vacuum film platen and a machine to auto process film.
My BIL has a 600mm process lens from where he worked before it closed down and for the last 15 years I've tried to talk him into letting me have it since he will never use it. So far no go.
 
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