Tests of Scanner Nikkor vs Printing Nikkor

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Wed May 03, 2017 7:15 pm

Scanner-Nikkor ED on left, PN105A on right:

PN105A top, Scanner Nikkor ED bottom:

I'll have to say at the start that these are very sloppy tests. I am on the road and have no tripod, no stacking, no way to mount the Scanner Nikkor on the camera, etc. I will try to make better tests later. The bottom line is that I really can't tell how these stack up against each other. Some shots look great but I don't think I have really done justice to either lens, and the parts that are sharp are different in each image.

My impression is that the Scanner Nikkor is close in quality to the Printing Nikkor but now I think the PN might be better. Also I see that the PN is coated while the SN is not. [Edit: Ray Parkhurt's comment below led me to take a closer look, and it IS coated, though the coating is not conspicuous as it is in a normal camera lens.] And the PN has a diaphragm, the SN does not. But the SN looks very very good.

My first tests were on a Urania ripheus that I had left here in my last trip. The colored scales are too 3-dimensional to be imaged at this aperture without stacking, so I mostly concentrated on the black scales.

Here's the full picture on MFT sensor. This is from the PN105 but both lenses look the same at this size. Very little of the wing is in focus because of the wide aperture.

Some 100% crops from the Scanner Nikkor images:

Now the PN:

Sorry for the poor pictures.

ray_parkhurst · Post by **ray_parkhurst** » Wed May 03, 2017 8:42 pm

Thanks for the first glimpse at the SN. Although it's hard to make conclusions on the comparison, that's a bit amazing in itself. The SN is at least very good! I look forward to more direct comparisons with same view so that pixel peeking can be done.

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Wed May 03, 2017 9:16 pm

Sorry about the variation between views. The diameters of the lenses are different and I am just laying the lens on a book in front of the camera, so I can't easily keep the field of view fixed.

I think it is not surprising that the Scanner Nikkor can keep up with the PN 105, but I do think the PN 105 will prove to be the better lens. They are both made with 14 elements and both have 6 ED elements; I think that is a higher proportion of ED elements than any consumer Nikkor prime lenses. My guess is that the Scanner Nikkor is just an updated version of the PN 105 without a diaphragm and without coating. I was surprised to find it was uncoated.

ray_parkhurst · Post by **ray_parkhurst** » Wed May 03, 2017 9:57 pm

The image of the lens in the auction listing appears coated but it must be something reflecting.

Coating on the outer surfaces is generally for scratch protection, flare resistance, etc. Since the scanner lens is in a protected environment free from undesired lighting, it is probably just not needed.

The lens was likely made by Tochigi Nikon. They make all the "industrial" Nikon lenses, including the RayFact line which includes the Printing-Nikkors:

http://www.tochigi-nikon.co.jp/en/products/index.htm

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Thu May 04, 2017 6:14 am

Ray, I hadn't noticed that. In the eBay picture it really does look coated.I looked at mine again and I see now that it is indeed coated, but with a very inconspicuous coating, nothing like a camera lens or your PN 105. The internal reflections do have different colors though. So I take back my statement about not being coated. Thanks for noticing that.

One thing that bothers me about those Rayfact lenses is the "ecological glass". The old designs depended on exotic glasses, perhaps with lanthanum. These were prohibited recently for environmental reasons. I would expect that their performance has taken a hit relative to the older designs like your PM 105. The same happened with Sigma's excellent 70mm macro lens; environmental regulations make it impossible to duplicate nowadays.

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Fri May 05, 2017 3:43 pm

I figured out a mounting method for the SN that doesn't require epoxy. 52-55mm step up and step down rings fit around the thinner sections of the lens, and 62mm rings fit around the fatter section and grab it. I end with a BR2A ring. [In a previous version of this post, which I deleted, I ended with a BR3 ring, which makes no sense at all.]

The rings shown here don't fit tight on the middle bulge of the lens; I needed to fill it with styrofoam. If two 62-67mm rings were replaced by an empty 62mm filter, I think it will be screw-tight.

Macrero · Post by **Macrero** » Sat May 06, 2017 6:20 am

Nice lenses, Lou! Would be interesting to see a head-to-head comparison

I have a Printing-Rodagon 105/5.6, it is much, much smaller than the Nikkors, but is actually a pretty excellent lens. Haven't used it much though, since I barely work at magnifications around 1X.

Here is a test-stack at 1X , f/6:

100% crop:

Best,

- Macrero

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Sat May 06, 2017 6:53 am

Nice lens, Macrero. I hadn't heard of it before. For my purposes I need a faster lens, because I am trying to get 50Mp images with FOVs of just a mm or two, and diffraction kicks in. That's why these lenses caught my attention. Even they are really too slow, but they are the best I can find (Repro-Nikkor 85mm f/1.0 would be better but is very rare.)

Now that I have a mount for the SN I made some more tests [Edit: I've replaced images that were mixed up, see below.]

Whole frame (SN), single shot, focused on upper center:

These are 50Mp pictures, 8100px wide, so the following 100% crops are equivalent to a 120%-150% crop on most sensors:

100% crop, SN:

100% crop, PN, almost the same area in focus (I don't have a camera support here with me so can't get exactly the same areas in focus...sorry):

My impression from looking at the whole image and taking many pictures is that the PN has better contrast and picks up detail better in the darkest areas, but they are close.

So again, I'd recommend anyone on a budget who would like something like a PN 105 should try to get one of these. I made these tests now because one of these is currently available on eBay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NIKON-SUPER-COO ... Swt0FZA5cK

If that one gets away, sometimes a Coolscan 8000 comes up for sale "For parts or not working".

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Sat May 06, 2017 7:06 am

I should add that these are jpgs, no post-processing, not even exposure adjustments, which implies that the aperture of the SN is close to 2.8 like the PN.

I suspect the slight differences in design between the PN and SN are due to the need for this SN to produce a 60mm image circle of high quality.

ray_parkhurst · Post by **ray_parkhurst** » Sat May 06, 2017 8:16 am

Printing-Rodagon? I have never heard of such a beast. Can you show a picture of this lens Macrero?

Lou, I pixel-peeped between the SN and PN images, and they are the same. Literally the same image, so I think something got messed up during your upload.

Macrero · Post by **Macrero** » Sat May 06, 2017 9:47 am

Lou, if that's the case, then yeah, you need a faster lens.

Ray, this is a quite rare version, manufactured for use in printing machines, it is not marked "Printing-Rodagon", but has a "P" (printing) on the barrel. I call it Printing-Rodagon, cuz it sounds more fancy

and it is actually a printing lens...

It is a very compact lens, smaller than the enlarging Rodagon. Absolutely top quality optics, very sharp, contrasty, has a nice coverage (perfect on APS-C, even wide open) and is apo-level color corrected. A really nice tiny lens, great for field macro as well.

-Macrero

ray_parkhurst · Post by **ray_parkhurst** » Sat May 06, 2017 10:10 am

Macrero wrote: Ray, this is a quite rare version, manufactured for use in printing machines, it is not marked "Printing-Rodagon", but has a "P" (printing) on the barrel. I call it Printing-Rodagon, cuz it sounds more fancy and it is actually a printing lens...

It is a very compact lens, smaller than the enlarging Rodagon. Absolutely top quality optics, very sharp, contrasty, has a nice coverage (perfect on APS-C, even wide open) and is apo-level color corrected. A really nice tiny lens, great for field macro as well...

Thanks Macrero! I've never seen that version of the Rodagon, though I have seen/owned several Rodenstock lenses that were purpose-built for scanners/printers. Most of those are fixed-aperture types, so it is rare to see bespoke lenses with adjustable apertures.

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Sat May 06, 2017 10:19 am

Ray, thanks for the warning-- just got back from the field and will see what got mixed up.

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Sat May 06, 2017 10:53 am

Ray, I've put the right images in place of the old ones, and re-cropped them so they cover the same area. And I've removed the 1200% images in case those were mixed up. Without doubt the PN is sharper, crisper.

ray_parkhurst · Post by **ray_parkhurst** » Sat May 06, 2017 11:10 am

Lou Jost wrote:Ray, I've put the right images in place of the old ones, and re-cropped them so they cover the same area. And I've removed the 1200% images in case those were mixed up. Without doubt the PN is sharper, crisper.

Thanks Lou.

I did a 400x400 crop from the same area and animated it for pixel peeping. No need to annotate which is which: