Any Schneider 210XL owners here?

I just bought a like-new Schneider Super Symmar 210mm XL lens. The big giant one in the copal 3 shutter with the impossible front lens element that no glass filters exist for. My plans are to use it on a 8x20 camera this spring.

In checking the lens on my 8x10 camera (8x20 isn't here yet) I noticed right away it’s noticeably soft. To the eye, looks okay on the ground glass. But with a 12x loupe I can see it just isn’t razor sharp, not at all like my other lenses. Very fine details, small signs with text, distant window panes just can’t be resolved with the precision and perfect sharpness I’m accustomed to.

Is this just a characteristic of the lens because of its insane image circle? Should it be behaving like this? Again, this is going on an 8x20 that will only be contact printed from. Any other owners of this lens reading this?

Didn't notice any issues on mine, either when focusing or on the negatives...

Same here, no issues with sharpness. Is it possible that the spacing of the two cells has been altered, like ones of them is loose, or that shims have been lost? (just brainstorming). Maybe it’s time to reach out to whoever you purchased it from.

Thanks Corran and Kiwi. Perhaps I’m being a bit too expectant of the lens. The image of the XL does look good on the ground glass of my 8x10. By eye alone it looks just fine. I have to remember this lens is a very different beast from the standard 210 lenses we all normally see and use.

I have no doubts it’ll work great on the 8x20 when it gets here. I was just a bit surprised when I put a high power loupe on the glass and couldn’t get the micro-tiny stuff to snap in focus like I’m used to. I assume possibly that was a tradeoff for the massive image circle.

I'd owned two different 210XL's at some point (long story), and both of them were super sharp in the center at f8, and across 8x10 frame at f16. The sharpness did drop slightly with the unobtanium centre filter. Interestingly one lens was shimmed and the other not, so definitely some fine tuning were done at Schneider before they left the factory. If yours feels soft it might be due to that. Try to unscrew the front element slightly (someone should assist you!) to see if a shim is needed.

These days I prefer the Grandagon 200mm, it has a much bigger rear element but I don't need to use the centre filter. Sharpness-wise they're both superb.

I'd look at a negative exposed at your most common f/stop (f/22?) with the loupe. That's "ground truth".

With a 12x loupe you will be looking at it quite critically.
Are you talking about what you can see with the lens at f/5.6 or f/8 ?
I supply the Schneider performance curves below. The field performance at f/5.6 and f/8 is a bit soft in the field, certainly when compared to something like an Apo Symmar 210 ( which does of course have a smaller field ) .
The upper pair of curves here is the MTF for 5cy/mm.
The XL really needs to be stopped down to f/16 before it gets sharp in the field ... if you are looking that closely.

https://i.ibb.co/5j0LtCQ/SSMXL-210-snip.jpg

Just for clarity I would like to say the lens is looking fine on the ground glass to the plain eye. From a normal distance it looks good. Just comparing it under high magnification I'm noticing peculiarities.

Mark J, yes, I am examining the image at f/5.6. And 12x is a lot. Not optimal at that aperture nor magnification I realize yet my other lenses do look fantastic at the same magnification with the lens wide open when focusing. That's what had me initially wondering about what I was seeing with the 210XL and if it was behaving as it should. However...

Kiwi, Minh, you may be on to something with the shims. I set up the camera outside and examined and focused very carefully with the 12x loupe on the ground glass. To not risk the lens I didn't unscrew the front element (doggone that thing is big) but adjusted the rear element inside the camera by unscrewing it and rechecking the image on the ground glass with the loupe. I found with the rear element fully screwed in the image is slightly, slightly soft seen in the magnifier. Hard lines with contrast were a bit mushy. When I unscrewed the rear element one full turn (I did various amounts) I saw a noticeable improvement. Then it looked and behaved like my normal lenses. Focus snapped into place, fine details were apparent.

I'm cautiously thinking it may need shims then. Might've been misplaced by the previous owner. I'm about to do some exposures (right with you Mark S) on film to double check the whole spacing thing.

If I do need shims, Schenider Optics here in the US is long, long gone. Anyone think Schnider Germany would do it without having to send the entire lens to them?

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Originally Posted by konakoa

Just for clarity I would like to say the lens is looking fine on the ground glass to the plain eye. From a normal distance it looks good. Just comparing it under high magnification I'm noticing peculiarities.

Mark J, yes, I am examining the image at f/5.6. And 12x is a lot. Not optimal at that aperture nor magnification I realize yet my other lenses do look fantastic at the same magnification with the lens wide open when focusing. That's what had me initially wondering about what I was seeing with the 210XL and if it was behaving as it should. However...

Kiwi, Minh, you may be on to something with the shims. I set up the camera outside and examined and focused very carefully with the 12x loupe on the ground glass. To not risk the lens I didn't unscrew the front element (doggone that thing is big) but adjusted the rear element inside the camera by unscrewing it and rechecking the image on the ground glass with the loupe. I found with the rear element fully screwed in the image is slightly, slightly soft seen in the magnifier. Hard lines with contrast were a bit mushy. When I unscrewed the rear element one full turn (I did various amounts) I saw a noticeable improvement. Then it looked and behaved like my normal lenses. Focus snapped into place, fine details were apparent.

I'm cautiously thinking it may need shims then. Might've been misplaced by the previous owner. I'm about to do some exposures (right with you Mark S) on film to double check the whole spacing thing.

If I do need shims, Schenider Optics here in the US is long, long gone. Anyone think Schnider Germany would do it without having to send the entire lens to them?

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I really hope the you don’t need it serviced by Schneider. That’s going to cost a bundle if they will even do it.

As I recall in Schneider’s literature for the XL aspeherics (I have the 110) there was a warning not to disassemble the front from the shutter due to alignment/shimming being extra finicky on these. Hopefully the previous owner(s) didn’t mess with it.

SK Grimes could make one for you at much less cost than sending to Germany. . . Or maybe they could make you a ring that would space the lens exactly one revolution of a lens element without the lens because they would know the TPI and diameter of the lens mount in the shutter.

I've always thought that any such shims are always only behind the front element group...as the necessity of removing a rear group in order to mount to a lens board would make it too risky to place a shim in that (rear) location, due to its potential to get lost/misplaced. At any rate...the only shim's I've ever noticed in my lenses to date have always been mounted behind the front lens group.

Check verticality of the front standard. It’s got a very heavy front element that might be torquing the standard forward, effectively adding tilt.

You might find that you have a horizontal and or good focus where Scheimpflug kicks in to soften the upper and lower areas of the image circle.

Can anyone that owns this lens confirm that there is a shim between the shutter and front element? I don't have the 210 XL (I might buy one) but I have the 210 Super Angulon. It does have a shim for the front element.

-Joshua

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Originally Posted by Joshua Dunn

Can anyone that owns this lens confirm that there is a shim between the shutter and front element? I don't have the 210 XL (I might buy one) but I have the 210 Super Angulon. It does have a shim for the front element.

-Joshua

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The extra warning from Schneider not to disassemble the XL lenses suggests they have been factory-adjusted with shims etc. See attached extract from Schneider's lens catalogue when these were current:

Attachment 245445

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Originally Posted by Joshua Dunn

Can anyone that owns this lens confirm that there is a shim between the shutter and front element? I don't have the 210 XL (I might buy one) but I have the 210 Super Angulon. It does have a shim for the front element.

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I don't know that it's possible to answer that question - AFAIK, we don't know whether the lens was engineered to require all samples to have a shim, or whether only some samples need one to perform within spec.

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Originally Posted by Michael R

The extra warning from Schneider not to disassemble the XL lenses suggests they have been factory-adjusted with shims etc. See attached extract from Schneider's lens catalogue when these were current:

Attachment 245445

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So that suggests you could never mount the lens in a new lensboard without going to the factory? Or maybe it simply suggests you should never unscrew the front element.

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Originally Posted by domaz

So that suggests you could never mount the lens in a new lensboard without going to the factory? Or maybe it simply suggests you should never unscrew the front element.

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It’s the front element-shutter assembly they are referring to.

See post #5 by Bob Salomon in this thread: https://www.largeformatphotography.i...-Copal-shutter

He indicates that shim/shims/absence thereof is specific to a particular lens (front and rear cells) and shutter combination (he is speaking here of Rodenstock lenses.) So if I have, say, a 210 mm Super Symmar XL and it has a shim of a given thickness, that doesn't necessarily mean that your 210 mm Super Symmar XL needs the same shim to work best with the shutter you have.

Also it seems to me that if one is swapping a "shimmed" lens from a "bad" to a "good" shutter, one doesn't know if the shim should follow along. So I suppose you'd try it with and without and see if one way is better and hope for the best. Which is to say if it's better with the shim, hoping it wouldn't be even better with a shim of a different thickness...

I have five lenses I've bought new beginning in the 1990's. One had a shim (behind the front cell), a 120 mm Super Symmar HM (1997). This was the first time I became aware of shims; nearly dropped and lost it.
The four lenses that did not have shims: 58 mm Super Angulon XL, 110 mm Super Symmar XL, 200 mm Nikkor M, 210 mm Apo-Sironar S. Of course there may be other examples of these lenses that are shimmed.

David

I have a fine lens, I dropped the shim as I was unaware

They are not wide, may be VERY thin and hard to replace

I shimmed test Diesel Liners to 0.001"

Often, but the liner was 6" wide brass ship

Custom


My lens works fine for ME, but I know OP is VERY particular

I think that the rear asphere in these is correcting a lot of aberration from the front group. Hence the tolerance in positioning of the two sections relative to each other is likely much tighter than some earlier lenses.

Yes T.C. I can believe that the lens shims are thin, might be a 'thou' or slightly more, to make a useful step in the air gap.
I spoke to Schneider about my Componon-S 210 a few weeks ago and they warned me to look out for a shim when I took it apart to alter the mount. It didn't have one, but they said some have one, some don't.

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Originally Posted by Mark J

I think that the rear asphere in these is correcting a lot of aberration from the front group. Hence the tolerance in positioning of the two sections relative to each other is likely much tighter than some earlier lenses.

Yes T.C. I can believe that the lens shims are thin, might be a 'thou' or slightly more, to make a useful step in the air gap.
I spoke to Schneider about my Componon-S 210 a few weeks ago and they warned me to look out for a shim when I took it apart to alter the mount. It didn't have one, but they said some have one, some don't.

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In addition to the examples of new lenses, shimmed and not, that I cited above, I did find a used 55 mm Apo-Grandagon to have a shim .012 inches (about 0.3 mm) thick (measured with dial calipers.) . The shim on my 120 mm Super Symmar HM seemed rather thinner, delicate to the point I'd rather not risk handling and measuring it.

David

So much written here about shims…

You will NOT see any difference, whether shims are there or not, on a ground glass.

This is something else.

Of course it is. This is about fine-tuning the performance, for example what sharpness you get on a 55 Grandagon at f/11.
If you read the front page of Schneider's patent for the last Apo Symmars ( c.1998) , you see that the stated aim was to improve the lens again by an increment to match the performance of the best contemporary film stocks and allow use at f/11 and f/16 to minimise diffraction.
It would only be of real importance to some people doing product shots or billboards, but that's the reason for the additional consideration of tolerances.

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Originally Posted by Mark J

Of course it is. This is about fine-tuning the performance, for example what sharpness you get on a 55 Grandagon at f/11.
If you read the front page of Schneider's patent for the last Apo Symmars ( c.1998) , you see that the stated aim was to improve the lens again by an increment to match the performance of the best contemporary film stocks and allow use at f/11 and f/16 to minimise diffraction.
It would only be of real importance to some people doing product shots or billboards, but that's the reason for the additional consideration of tolerances.

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Maybe on 25asa film shooting line pairs, but not on a ground glass (with its 25000asa gritty surface).

You will never see the difference on the GG of shim vs no shim.

Erm, yes but there's lots of stuff you will not see on the ground glass that you do see on a print. Not everyone shoots 7x17 !

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Originally Posted by Mark J

Erm, yes but there's lots of stuff you will not see on the ground glass that you do see on a print. Not everyone shoots 7x17 !

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It’s got nothing to do with format.

It has to do with process/testing methodology.

You wouldn’t test a digital lens’ sharpness by shooting fine detail at highest ISO. So, to, you can’t gauge this lens’ sharpness by looking at a GG. The very nature of a GG is that it needs a (varying) level of coarseness to allow the image to appear. It will act as a soft focus screen in order to preview the image.

Whether 7x17 or 2x3, this will not change.

Finally, there has been no response to whether the lens is torquing the front mount out of parallel that I proposed earlier. That will give a demonstrable effect on a GG.

Lachlan, the camera for now I'm evaluating the lens on is a metal monorail. I've watched the front standard as I insert the 210XL lens. As I let go of the lens and the weight transfers fully to the camera I haven't noted any flex on the standard. Currently I'm exposing a few negatives with the rear element fully seated, then loosened one revolution where I did see a difference in the 12x loupe on the ground glass. Weather now is not great with high winds, rain and freezing wind so I'm waiting on an opportunity to finish up the film checks with the lens.

Question relating to shims (or lack thereof) and testing: If one purchases a used lens and then notes that it comes without shims and also shows a level of performance not "up to par," who can one send this to for both testing and the installation of the correct shim?

I use a Horseman Optical Bench

Very sturdy

Updating this thread. I exposed several sheets of film with my lens to see if it needed shimming. I exposed numerous sheets with the rear element fully seated, then an equal number with it backed out one full turn on the threads.

Backing out the rear element required refocusing. Previously I could see a difference (in tiny details seen in my loupe) fully screwed in versus backed out on the ground glass. The image looked sharper on the ground glass in my 12x loupe when the rear element was backed out. I did multiple back and forth evaluations. The real test however is on film.

Long story short, making careful exposures (keeping everything fully labeled and tracked in my darkroom from camera to finished in plastic pages) there’s no difference in my lens if it’s screwed in fully or backed out. I looked at the negatives directly with the same 12x loupe. Again, I am looking at tiny, tiny details on the film. Nothing that would ever show up in the contact prints that will ultimately be made with this lens on the 8x20 camera.

Just for comparison I placed a Nikkor-W 210 in the sequence (no, not for covering 8x20 but just for the same focal length and magnification) and it and the 210XL were equally sharp on the same scenes with the same resolving power.

So my 210XL lens is fine as far as I can determine! Maybe my problem earlier is aging eyesight. Getting older is not fun.

If I may just offer my experience ...

I have the 110XL. Soon after I bought it I had focussing issues. Real weird issues. This was maybe 8 years ago or so. It turned out that Schneider had used a poor cement between two elements. I had to ship it to California (from Australia). Schneider were very reasonable about it all.

I reckon the 210XL could suffer a similar fate given that it will come from the same factory floor.

Be careful.
With wrong spacing you will always get a sharp picture in the center (by refocusing).
But there will be growing field curvature and unsharpness to the borders of IC which you cannot minimize by refocusing but only by closing the aperture.
Symmetrical lens constructions like Symmar, Ronar, Claron and even Super-Angulon are not critical to small spacing errors. Super Symmar XL is a extremly unsymmetrcal lens construction, and this is why Schneider warned against incorrect mounting.
If you want to test your lens to spacing error, compare the border resolution at given centerfocus and opened aperture within various spacings by screwing rear lens.

Very interesting point about symmetrical vs asymmetrical optics.

Have not read thru entire thread so maybe this has been answered...but if I were to want my 110XL tested for alignment - to whom might I send it?

(as I've said previously...I'll be hanging on to my 120 SA no matter what!)

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Originally Posted by swmcl

I have the 110XL. Soon after I bought it I had focussing issues. Real weird issues.

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There is another potential cause of focus issues, I'm not sure if Schneider had trouble, in this era, but I know that Leica did, with the first aspheric M 35/1.4

The XL's use an aspheric surface. Getting the required surface quality ( 'figure error' ) is harder on an asphere than a spherical surface. Whether the lens is directly ground and polished, or a moulding ( the mould still has to be ground and polished ) , there can be errors taking the form of concentric ripples , present in the finished surface. There can also be a central peak or dip in the surface ( I am talking about errors only at the 1µm level ) .
The ripple is the main cause of 'onion ring bokeh' that is discussed a lot on the digital forums with fast 35mm lenses.

The central peak or dip is a problem in other ways . It can cause a significant stop-down focus shift - like that seen on early lenses in the 19th & early 20th century which were poorly corrected for spherical aberration. I think Leica had this problem.

To be clear, I do not know if this affected any Schneider XL's, but I know that we in the Avionics and Infra-Red fields saw both types of problems in lenses in the late 90's and early 2000's, which gradually went away as we improved measurements and procedures, and the machines got better.

The flawed cementing issue was said to be related only to the earlier serial numbers of the 80 XL and 110 XL, not the 210XL. Schneider replaced them for free only up to a certain cut-off date; so some flawed one are still out there. That affected serial number list should still be available from Schneider, or perhaps someone has reposted it.

Lenses of this price and quality, and limited availability, no doubt had the aspheric element quality control figured out. That never was in question with end users, just the experimental new sealant. In my neighborhood, contract aspherics have been turning out flawlessly for decades. I personally interacted with them in terms of facilities supplies as far back as the late 70's. The tooling was perfected quite awhile ago, then got even better, and led to higher quantity capacity as well. But their customers have huge Govt budgets and need it done right every single time.

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Originally Posted by Drew Wiley

Lenses of this price and quality no doubt had the aspheric element quality control figured out.

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Lenses of the price and quality of the Summilux-M 35 Aspheric didn't, at the start.

Of course it's not fair to compare the capabilities of a price-is-no-object custom contractor which has specialized in high-end aspherics for decades with consumer optics, even from Leica, which is bargain basement priced by comparison. And I of course don't know exactly how Schneider's Symmar XL elements were made, only that there seem to be no complaints over this series of lenses, and only praises about their exceptional performance, with the exception of the early sealant failure issue.

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Originally Posted by Drew Wiley

1. Of course it's not fair to compare the capabilities of a price-is-no-object custom contractor which has specialized in high-end aspherics for decades with consumer optics,
2. sealant failure issue.

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1. Nobody made this comparison, who are you talking about ?
2. It was cement that was discussed, not sealant.

However I'm happy to hear and accept that the majority of the XL lenses were great.
But I accept the

Hi again, Mark. I'm obviously not an engineer myself. But as a materials provider, I interacted with the owner of Tinsley Labs several times a week, probably the most advanced maker of aspheric lenses and mirrors in the world (now part of Coherent laser system). So I learned all kinds of interesting tidbits, at least, casually from him, while he was still alive. They made the correction lenses for the Hubble, along with nearly all the other big space and ground telescope aspherics, whether NASA or Euro based. Their old obsolete aspheric grinding machinery, going back to the 1950's, was consigned to a special workshop space made available to serious amateur astronomers one evening a week, at least prior to the pandemic.

And jargon differs regionally. They referred to edge cement as "sealant". And when I sold machinist supplies earlier, I worked alongside an ex-NASA engineer, who made the optics for the Pioneer satellite program; and he referred to cement as sealant too, unless we were talking about shoe sole glue or Formica glue. After that, we both worked together again in a construction supply firm, where "cement" had a very different meaning. For awhile I wrote feature articles for a glossy architectural magazine oriented to the pro trade, where conflicting regional spellings and pronunciations had to be ironed, or explained in brackets, prior to publication. For example, what we call a "rabbet" window plane in the US is what the Brits call a "rebate" plane. Then another fellow making miniature versions of these for sake of musical instrument makers deliberately took this mixup a step further, and marketed his miniature versions as "bunny planes". It was a lot of fun juggling all this various terminology around.

No issues with my 110xl, although (a) I bought it new - ie it had not been improperly disassembled and (b) it was from a relatively late production run. It came with the ooh-la-la Linhof engraving but I doubt that makes any difference.

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Originally Posted by Drew Wiley

The flawed cementing issue was said to be related only to the earlier serial numbers of the 80 XL and 110 XL, not the 210XL. Schneider replaced them for free only up to a certain cut-off date; so some flawed one are still out there. That affected serial number list should still be available from Schneider, or perhaps someone has reposted it.

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No such list has been made public. Schneider has refused to respond to questions about this.

All kinds of specifics which they once had on public file have now been mothballed by Schneider, but might be still accessible with some serious digging. Back during the incident itself, I actually saw the bracket on serial numbers in question, because I was thinking of buying one of those lenses myself. But at a certain point, they abruptly cut the cord in terms of warranty replacements. Kinda like hit n' run driving. I'd was a victim of that with another photo gear manufacturer already, so turned my attention to Fuji LF lens options instead.

OK Drew, I did wonder if you were referring to Tinsley.
There are probably two processes here. the optical joining of lenses on their surfaces is usually referred to as cementing, but there may be an outside covering of sealant too, which can also be part of the blackening of edges for stray light reasons.

There are typically two problems with cementing lenses that can give rise to problems :
Glasses that are too different in expansion coefficient, that come apart in time, with temperature swings.
Glasses on a doublet where both of them do not transmit enough UV for a UV-curing cement, where the bond is not fully cured.

Yes, and the expansion/contraction differential between moulded acrylic aspheric elements and real glass is probably the reason the functional size of such "hybrid" lenses is rather limited.

But back to Schneider edge sealant. I never had any "Schneideritis" until I took a particular lens on a backacking trip one November into a lengthy deep Southwest canyon where the differential temperature between the sun overhead and bitter night cold could be nearly a 90 degree swing! Ridiculous diurnal stresses. I'd be there wearing an 85 lb backpack trying to get enough water to make it to the next spring, jumping on pool ice with that pack n' all in 90 degree heat, trying to crack its thickness! Meanwhile, there were still icicles hanging from seeps on shaded adjacent cliffs. Yet in direct sun, heat stroke was a distinct worry. Gosh- and way up high, Anasai cliff ruins. No wonder skeletons of those people were symptomized by severe arthritis at only 40 years of age - lugging everything from rocks and water pots to baskets of corn up those cliffs under such temp swing extremes.