Vintage lenses for IR

[nfoto]

I have in general found older lenses to produce better IR images than the very newest and modern offerings. Due to the simplicity of the opticl layour and costings it seems likely they generate less artifacts and in many cases, show less tendency towards hot-spotting. The latter is a real issue for mirrorless systems in my experience. For example, not a single of the native Z-mount Nikkors are free of troublesome IR hot-spots.

 

On the other hand, my "new" Nikkor-N 5cm f/1.1 produces glorious IR with the PrimaLuce-modified Nikon  Z5. Hoya R72 filter, lens set to f/1.1. This lens harks back to 1959.

 

[photoni]

as I wrote you on Flickr:
beautiful IR photo, they are my favorite in landscapes.
Fantastic lens, truly iconic

[Guest]

What about that faint banding in the center of the frame?

[nfoto]

The Z5 does make some banding visible, UV is a known issue area, but also in IR if you push the NEF sufficiently. I remember being required to do horizontal band removal by a Topaz plugin, but perhaps didn't watch the output to learn if all the nasties had gone. Surely the image could be polished further if I had time for it.

[Guest]

Nevertheless, it is a dreamy photo. Thanks for sharing.
 

I used to have a process in photoshop to add banding that mimics old interlaced CRT televisions. 
 

Now, about that rare old lens. Wow!

[Doug A]

Magical image and lens. Superb capture.

 

Thanks for sharing,

Doug A

[colinbm]

Nice contrasts Birna

[nfoto]

This is the very lens and camera used.

 

 

[Guest]

A gauss design by Saburo Murakami traced using abacus and slide rule.
 

Its real beauty only known in modern times of classics is to draw out the coma by use of specular highlights. Aka, swirl. 

One of the rangefinder series optomechanically engineered by Kazuya Udagawa. 
 

With that unmistakable look the rangefinder series brought is now seen in brands like Voigtlander. If Nikon knew what’s best they would release a manual focus line with a similar feel. They would sale out fast, real fast. Though I wonder why they didn’t use Preset type aperture. 

 

Who is the real champion? I guess they go hand in hand. 
 

I own only one S lens and it is solid and very heavy compared to its more modern F mount version. 

 

https://imaging.nikon.com/history/story/0007/index.htm

 

Do you also have the W-NIKKOR 3.5cm f/1.8?

 

[dabateman]

Birna I am also starting to think the placement  of the lens elements matters for hotspots.

In making my own without coatings,  placing an element really far back near the sensor almost always leads to a very bright IR hotspot.

Newest lens design seem to do that for corner sharpness.  Whereas older lenses where more retro focal.

I wonder if you test an older Nikon lens that used to hotspot on F-mount,  if it would be as bad on Z-mount,  as the rear lens element would be much further from the sensor. 

[nfoto]

Several questions to be addressed.

 

1. Yes, I own the 3.5cm f/1.8 W-Nikkor and while it is a outstanding and sharp optic, it will produce (small) IR hot spots stopped down far. The f/3.5 model is much better for IR.

 

2. F-mount lenses that make IR hot spots on the F systems do the same on the Z. If anything, even worse.

 

 

[Guest]

Nobody buys a lens like that for IR anyway. It’s a collectors gem. You just enjoy the happy coincidence of a good IR frame. Can’t win them all though.

 

Cheers!

[nfoto]

Never say never, in fact I had potential for IR in mind when I finally pulled the trigger on a nice samle of the 5cm f/1.1. The main purpose admittedly was to complement my Z fc which looks gorgeous with most RF(S) lenses, but I did hope for an additional bonus.

[photoni]

11 hours ago, Blazer0ne said:

ts real beauty only known in modern times of classics is to draw out the coma by use of specular highlights. Aka, swirl. 

.

in this photo I do not see swirl, if it has been used fully open it is a very correct lens (with a big nice vignette)

 

5 hours ago, nfoto said:

Never say never, in fact I had potential for IR in mind when I finally pulled the trigger on a nice samle of the 5cm f/1.1. The main purpose admittedly was to complement my Z fc which looks gorgeous with most RF(S) lenses, but I did hope for an additional bonus.

.

For work, I bought the new MC 105 for the Z7 ... it's incredible ... old 105mm micro was only good at intermediate apertures, this exceeds it ten times at all apertures.

.
But for my entertainment I would like a lens like yours old luminous 5 cm ...   (probably I'm happy with a cheap Helios 44 58mm f2) 

[photoni]

a question to the administrators.
In Birna's photo there are no exif
in my photos all the exif with the © have disappeared

(before the change they were legible)

[nfoto]

There wasn't any EXIF in the actual file version uploaded here. Thus no wonder nothing could be gleaned afterwards.

 

The conversion process did mess up items with some special symbols, however. I have later corrected some items with @ symbol in them that got mangled, in particular e-mail addresses.

[photoni]

 

data is missing. the weight has also changed, probably the file is rewritten

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, photoni said:

.

in this photo I do not see swirl, if it has been used fully open it is a very correct lens (with a big nice vignette)

 

In the landscape photo seen above the focal point is far off in the background and the blur is in the foreground. Most over corrected lenses only show that feature of swirl in background blur.  Only a few lenses offer both. So you would need to reference something like a portrait where the point of focus is only a couple meters away with out of focus background and specular highlights to really light it up. Check out some sample photos online for reference. This lens really screams in that department. Maybe we can get an IR photo to match my comment.

 

Cheers!

 

 

[Andrea B.]

Toni -- I found the EXIF problem. There was a setting to Strip Exif which was set to ON. I turned it OFF.