A friend of mine has offered me a 50mm Leitz Focotar for next to nothing. (yes, I am a lucky beggar, thanks.)

Now I know this lens is a bit of a legend, but how well does it live up to it? Try to leave aside all your Leitz prejudices and tell me honestly if this fairly old 4 element design can really outperform well-respected modern 6 element optics.

I don't want to "rob" my friend by taking this lens if it's only the equal of, or inferior to, my Componon-s, and will end up gathering dust. If that's the case, then I'd rather they sell it for the going rate than do me a favour.

Thanks for any responses,

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), February 02, 2000

Answers

They say that you should not look a gift horse in the mouth, but in the case of an old Focotar, look through it to see if has internal haze. Most of them do. It can be removed, but at a cost of $50-100.

The Focotar lenses are excellent to superb, depending on their vintage. I am aware of three different 50mm f4.5 Focotars, one 60mm f4.5 Focotar, one 95mm Focotar, and one 100mm f5.6 Focotar-2. I will assume the lens your friend is offering to you is one of the 50mm Focotars. The first is a five element, four component triplet variant. It can be identified by the fact that the lens discription is on the front of the aperture control ring. The second variant is a five element gauss design that was provided by Schneider for Leitz. It has the lens discription on the side of the lens barrel. The third variant is the 50mm f4.5 Focotar-2. It is a six element gauss design, and it also has the lens description on the side of the barrel. I own the the first and the third variants. The first lens is excellent, but is outperformed by the Focotar-2, especially at higher magnifications. The Focotar-2 is superb, and is unsurpassed by any modern 50mm enlarging lens. The original Focotar was unsurpassed by any of its competition in its hayday. The performance of the Schneider Focotar was described by one user as better in regard to vignettting than the Focotar-2, but that the Focotar-2 had slightly better resolution. The Schneider variant has much larger front and rear elements than the two Leitz Focotars, and I suspect that is is a faster lens than f4.5, but was diaphragmed by Leica to f4.5 to work better with the autofocus of the Focomat 1c enlarger.

I have compared the Focotar-2 to the currently available 50mm f2.8 Nikor and Schneider Componon. These lenses display resolution equal to the Focotar-2 at f5.6, but both of them display flare and color fringing to the extent that they would effect contrast in the print! I also tested the older 50mm f2.8 Nikor lens, and found that it does not display flare and color fringing at f5.6, but it does not quite equal the resolution of the Focotar-2.

Hey, take the lens - after looking it in the mouth - and check it against your Componon. If you have a Focomat enlarger, it will enable you to achieve autofocus. If you don't like the Focotar, sell it for $250, and split the profit with your friend.

-- Eilert Anders (eilert@dav.com), February 18, 2000.

Thanks Eilert, I've already snatched my friends hand off.

It's the version with the lettering on the front of the ring, and it shows no sign of cloudiness. I'll look forward to testing it. I can't say that I've noticed any flare or colour abberation in my Componon-S though.

The f/2.8 EL-Nikkor is grossly over-rated IMHO, and I am strictly a "Nikon man" as far as 35mm is concerned.

Thanks again,

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), February 21, 2000.