I recently bought an Angulon 120 f/6,8 to use on my Horseman 450. I paid $90 for it. The shutter is fine an the lens dates to 1954 and is single coated and has fine optics. I have two questions:

1) It will cost me another $80 to get it fitted to a Sinar lensboard (it's currently on a Linhof board, and there are no Horseman dealer in Norway, only a Sinar dealer) Should I go through with this, and will the lens perform OK?

2) Since it is an old lens, would it be sharper with a yellow/ red filter?

According to Schneider the lens has 6 elements and has an image cirkle of 211mm. I shoot only B & W, and I'm on a tight budget.

Any experiences with this lens will be appreciated.

-- Morten Řen (mooen@online.no), January 24, 2002

Answers

Interesting question because the recent Photo Vision magazine (the one Steve Anchell is now editing) had an interesting article by a high school student on a single wavelength filter (somewhere in the yellow-green range-AMAZING, the most common vintage filter I've seen!) yielding improved image sharpness. Of course, any regular B&W filter transmits a range of wavelengt

-- David Stein (DFStein@mac.com), January 24, 2002.

Yes, it will be worth it. Stopped down, Angulons can be quite sharp across the entire field. A 90mm barely covers 4x5, but the 120 should give you plenty of room. Enjoy.

-- (bmitch@home.com), January 24, 2002.

Thanks a lot for quick replies. I will look in my B+W catalogue and find a yellow/green filter and use the lens on f.22. I'm looking forward to try it out!

-- Morten Řen (mooen@online.no), January 24, 2002.

Your going to lose two stops with a #11 filter, either in aperture, or speed. The filter mentioned above by David is different than a #11. Maybe someone has the mag in front of them that can supply buying info, but you might want to read the article first; It is not a do it all filter.

-- Wayne Crider (waynecrider@hotmail.com), January 24, 2002.

I have been photographing B&W for 14 years. I know that there is no "do it all" filter. It's just that a yellow/green filter never crossed my mind as an alternative to orange and light red. And in my kind of photography it sounds great with a Y/G filter. It will darken the sky, penetrate haze, and lighten green leaves. It sounds almost to good... In adition it will enhance the rendering capability of the old lens through narrower wavelength. I don't expect miracles, but it looks like I can take OK pictures with a 50 year old lens that I got really cheep. I will post a report when I get it on a Sinar board and have run the first tests.

Morten

-- Morten Řen (mooen@online.no), January 28, 2002.