[LargeFormat] Schneider Angulon 120mm

[Michael Briggs]

On 08-Jun-02 Karl Wolz wrote:

(I changed the order of Karl's comments).
> Perhaps I was lucky in my selection, but for me, it's a great little lens.

This may be the answer to the conflicting views on Angulons: some people have
excellent ones, and others have lemons.  The testing by Christopher Perez and
Kerry Thalmann, http://www.hevanet.com/cperez/testing.html, found a lot of
sample to sample variation.  They don't have any measurements for the 120
Angulon, but they measured many 90 mm ones.

Of course, a 120 mm Angulon will perform better on 4x5 than a 90, since unless
you are using substantial movements you will be using the central portion of
the image circle.  We can guess that if 90's have a lot of sample-to-sample
variation, the 120's probably do also.

Most of the 90 mm Angulon's that they tested were ok at the edges--look
at the 3rd number listed at f16: most are around 30 lppmm.  One of their samples
shows 48 for this number, which is excellent.   On the other hand, they had one
(the last one in the table) that at f16 only did 13 in the center and 12 at the
edge--really terrible.

Their table has two modern top-of-the-line 90 mm lenses: a Nikkor-SW and a
Super-Angulon.  The particular Super-Angulon that they tested has rather
disappointing (for a recent lens) edge performance which is worse than many of
the Angulons.  The particular Nikkor-SW outclassed all of the other 90 mm
lenses: 60 lppmm at the edge.


> I use the 120mm 6.8 Angulon and am quite satisfied with it.  I've said many
> times that if I could only use one lens on a trip, the 120 would be it.
> 
> I've also been ridiculed considerably for this opinion.  I've been told that
> it is unsharp, has low contrast, it is hard to focus, it has soft edges,
> light fall-of is bad, and it is only usable at f:22.  Buncha bull, so far as
> I'm concerned, and I have yet to find anyone who can pick the difference
> between it and a "modern" equivalent.

It sounds like you got one of the good ones.

I think Chris and Kerry believe that in this era the Linhof selected ones do
tend to be better--probably Linhof rejected the lemons.  This bodes well for
Clive (who started this thread) if his lens is Linhof selected.  He said that
the shutter was marked Linhof--should the lens have also been marked Linhof?

Chris and Kerry's test procedure isn't perfect, but it is very good, and as far
as I know, the best published on the web.


--Michael