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Luminous Landscape Forum > Equipment & Techniques > Medium Format Digital Backs and Photography
klane
So Ive recently been trying to pick up some large format digital lenses, and I was offered a 90mm, which is a schneider. Now the 90mm is not marked digitar, but says apo componon and is in a copal 0 press shutter. I was told by the seller that some of the digitar lenses were originally sold like this through megavision and I think maybe through cambo? All the specs ive been given check out and Ive heard something like this before on the early digital lenses before they started branding them "digitar"

Can anyone confirm?

Here is a photo:
Jost von Allmen
Earlier in my analog darkroom days (and nights), I used to work with APO-Componons, which were great lenses.
So I think this particular lens is an enlarging lens, mounted in a standard shutter!
Check out http://www.schneideroptics.com/
under "Photography" "Photo Enlarging" you'll find the APO-Componon 4,5/90mm.
It might actually be a very good solution for copy work, even digital.
The barrel looks a little different than on your picture, but I'm shure this is not the same as the current Digitars, which are newer and optimized for smaller magnifications and digital (higher) expectations.
I use a new Digitar 180mm on an ALPA SWA with a P45+, it's a great combination, but unfortunately costs a lot more.
klane
Well yes I did my research on that, but the actual enlarging lenses I dont think could be mounted in a shutter at all.

Im just trying to dig up any info I can really, thanks for the input.
rueyloon
Hello

hi, is the seller a George ? or an Igor ?

I bought one after some research on this board. You can look through my previous posts.
I've also emailed Schneider and yes, they are the same as the Digitar lenses except they have slightly different spacing. To convert an enlarging lens (I'm not sure if the early megavision lenses fall into this category as well) into a "modern" Digitar lenser, you need to send the lens back to Schneider to be mounted on a shutter which they need to put in some spacers optimize the lenses for photography instead of the darkroom.

I have the 90mm, without another lenses to compare it with, it does look pretty good to me.

Here are the replies from schneider, compiled from my exchange with them.

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basically the Apo-Componon and Apo-Digitar is same construction.
He Digitar range is optimized for studio magnification range 1:10 to 1:20.

The Apo-Componon range is optimized for 10:1 magnification.
You should look to get a Apo-Componon that is already adjusted for photographic and not for enlarging purpose

Yes, if you will use the shutter between the front and rear element as usual you have to return to our factory for "spacing" otherwise you might lost up to 50% performance.
With the new shutter you will get a new scale for right iris adjust.

spacing is done with washers between the front cell of the lens and the shutter in steps of 1/100 to 1/1000

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