Considering Schneider Symmar 100 F/5.6 convertable to 175, made in 1965. For 4x5. Any experience?

-- John Laragh (jwl@taconic.net), August 19, 1999

Answers

this lens will perform admirably at its unconverted length, but will suffer somewhat at the converted length, common to all of the schneider convertibles. the optical quality of the symmar is excellent. a more important consideration for a lens of this vintage is the quality of the shutter. generally, it is a more reasonable investment to purchase newer lenses just to increase your faith in the reliability of the shutter - the only thing that is likely to fail on you in the field.

-- jnorman (jnorman@teleport.com), August 20, 1999.

Performance at the converted length suffers due to the fact that when you remove one element, you reemove some of the corrections built into the lens deesign. You can help the performance at the converted length by using a yellow filter #12 or 15.

-- N Dhananjay (ndhanu@umich.edu), August 20, 1999.