By clicking 'Proceed to checkout' you are agreeing to our current "Terms and Conditions", "Privacy" and "Shipping information"
Put your question here
Order service
Planar 80 X Xenotar 80
It´s been a long time that I was asked about any significant differences between Planar and Xenotar lenses.
I just can tell from my personal experience, that I don´t really see any differences between the lenses of the same generation, In fact this test has just confirmed my opinion.
I just can tell from my personal experience, that I don´t really see any differences between the lenses of the same generation, In fact this test has just confirmed my opinion.
What do we have here? Two completely rebuilt Rolleiflex 2.8D models of the same type and two lenses of the same generation, both are adjusted to the film plane, both got the new brighter screen and tested before. The Planar lens was cleaned inside and is free of dust/haze/fungus/scratches, etc. The front element of the Xenotar lens was re-polished and re-coated. Xenotar lenses from this decade are well known for many cleaning marks, so the front element of the Xenotar lens was re-worked in order to eliminate the "soft focus" caused by those marks that has a significant influence on the light transmission and unify the quality of the Xenotar lens in the context of the mark-free Planar lens.
Pictures were digitized using a drum scanner and shot on the same film - Ilford Delta 400 developed in Ilford DDX for 8:00 min. at 20℃ (just swapped it after the 6th picture).
I used the Rolleinar 1 close-up lens and tripod, Rolleinar 1 gives more character to the bokeh by reduction of the mfd (minimum focusing distance) and allows to show it more expressed.
What I've learned here, first of all, there´s practically no difference in sharpness or contrast, unfortunately I didn't fix the LED which was illuminating the table from above and because of this the nature of the lighting changed insignificantly from picture to picture, but in general I noticed the difference only in the shape of the round bokeh in the blur zone. I have no doubt that if I repeated the test with my cameras again, the result would be the same.
I used the Rolleinar 1 close-up lens and tripod, Rolleinar 1 gives more character to the bokeh by reduction of the mfd (minimum focusing distance) and allows to show it more expressed.
What I've learned here, first of all, there´s practically no difference in sharpness or contrast, unfortunately I didn't fix the LED which was illuminating the table from above and because of this the nature of the lighting changed insignificantly from picture to picture, but in general I noticed the difference only in the shape of the round bokeh in the blur zone. I have no doubt that if I repeated the test with my cameras again, the result would be the same.