Schneider Tele-Xenar 240/5.5

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I bought this lens today. It's not in the list testing results of LF lenses in Luong's LF site. Does anyone have experience with this one? Seems to be a charming lens.

-- Lot (lotw@wxs.nl), May 15, 1999

Answers

I own one Lot, I don't have any specs unfortunately, as a "press" lens it is adequate. To be honest I only use it as a portrait lens and a back move only landscaper and not much of that either. I bought it thinking it would serve double duty as a rf tele but I find I use my 90mm for most of those hand held shots. I'm considering trading up for a 240 with a bigger circle, then go for the 360mm tele-xenar for the action shots. I'm not sure but I think yours is single coated a newer tele-xenar, I think the older ones are 4.5. I hope you like it cause I hate mine. It's not long enough, has the typical truncated moves of the tele lenses and is contrasty to a fault. If you have another 240 hang on to it, the tele-xenar has but a few scant uses, primarily a zero-moves press lens. As a tele the draw is nice and short around 150mm but macros are out for me as my double extension bellows won't let the lens out far enough to enlarge the circle adequately and I don't have the patience or the camera stand on casters to move that fussy thing around all day. On a press camera I'm sure it is loved.

-- Trib (linhof6@hotmail.com), May 17, 1999.

Thanks for your respons, Trib; I speculated you would have one. Mine has got serial # 2815118 (f5.5 to f32+). I bought it because it was cheap, small, handy and I speculated on soft contrast for the probable portrait-function that Schneider must have had in mind. I must say that results so far do not indicate high contrast (but this can be personal). Maybe it's a bit 'dirty' in comparison to newer lenses (modern coating?), whites being beige. I'm rather pleased with the lens so far, but I did not expect it to be that brilliant as an APO-Symmar and I do not care about the small circle in this case. Only the old Press-Compur shutterspeeds (1/100, 1/50, 1/25 etc. to T) are a little disturbing.

I noticed indeed that bellow-extension is not 24cm at infinity, so it should be retro-focus? What does this mean for my calculation of exposure-compensation? Do I calculate back from 15cm (as you indicate as infinity position) in the formula or can I maintain 24cm as 'f'?

-- Lot (lotw@wxs.nl), May 17, 1999.


I use the 150 mm as "f" for compensation Lot, so I'd say start there. "Contrasty to a fault" sorry about that, I meant that at 16 to 32 it is only slightly softer than most 240's I've used, but then whoa, it drops off the scale (almost a magnitude per stop hehehe) after that and with that "back move" your imagining and the proper apple-shaped face well, it does have a nice soft niche to fill. I have a spare cam (tech 111) let me check the #'s and I'll send it to ya if you'd like.

-- Trib (linhof6@hotmail.com), May 17, 1999.

Yes, of course I like that, thanks!

-- Lot (lotw@wxs.nl), May 18, 1999.

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