Camera Talk

Besides the Rodenstocks and Schneiders there used to be the brilliant EL-Nikkors and the Vivitar VHE

The EL-Nikkors were in my youth the best lenses around, and were highly sought after. At some point in the 80s the N series came out and everybdy swoon, even CTEIN used to say that the APO-El-Nikkor N were the best enlarger lenses.
I have an old 50/2.8 (still says Nippon-Kogaku) and is great for Black and White. 6 Elements in 4 groups and sharp like nails up to 20x enlargement.
I have used it for macro as well, and it performs brilliant.

The Vivitar VHE were a step beyonde the Nikkors, I think those were Rodenstocks as well; I used the 75mm, and it was gorgeous.

However this weekend I got a Fujinon-EX 50/4. The lens is clean and has a lot of blades in the iris (9)
Anybody knows anything about this series of lenses?
It seems to be a rebadged Fujinon ES - a 4 element lens. I cleaned it last night and the glass is clean, blades are snappy but the white letters are covered in nicotine.

In my newspaper days, I used the El-Nikkor. Around 2003, I bought some Rodenstocks, but I moved so many times that I haven't had a change to use them.

I found that the 50mm 1:4 El-Nikkor had to be used stopped down to at least f8 to achieve sharpness across the frame. My Ernst Leitz Focotar 5cm 1:4.5 is sharp corner to corner wide open at f4.5. and is one of the finest enlarger lenses I have ever used. Another great enlarger lens was the Minolta Rokkor 50mm 1:4 and also the Rokkor 80mm 1:4.5. I once had a Kodak branded Rodenstock 5cm 1:5.6 microfisch enlarging lens that was absolutely spectacular, which could project a 30mm x 30mm microfisch image to 48 x 48 inches with perfect sharpness and zero distortion.