200mm Tube Lens Full Frame Test

[Scarodactyl]

I am not 100% sure which tube lens they actually put in their ultrawide heads, since they make the itl200 as well. In practice my nikon uw head doesn't give me CA trouble, though it's from one generation back and may have a different lens I suppose.

[RobertOToole]

That said, I got a Mitutoyo FS50 a while back and its performance puzzled me. It had a fixed 200mm tube lens, not the 1-2x zooming one, and IQ was fairly poor compared to my Nikon head.

Just now I've came across Nikon MXA20696 on Robert's site:
https://www.closeuphotography.com/nikon ... lens-test/
Or maybe I didn't paid to much attention to it before, but now 'Oh, wait, that's the lens I have in my Nikon CFI-UW LV-TI3 head'. Apparently, it turns out to have a lot of lateral CA.
Recently I was puzzled about poor CA performance of the Korrektar F-150, how, I thought, with its PLASMAT symmetric design (aka APO-Symmar) should be is 100% CA free! Now I see, the lateral CA by amount and sign are identical to Robert's pictures MXA20696 normal mount.
Now I'm wondering is it possible to swap this crap (MXA20696) for something else like ITL200, other than that LV-TI3 is a great trinocular.

The size and threads of the MXA20696 and ITL200 are compatible. Nikon has to make a big range of tube lenses for various purposes, I wonder why the use the MXA20696? Low cost maybe?

Best,

Robert

[Duke]

Maybe, but I don't think costs is the most crucial factor here, rather than equipment specialization. My head comes from some special IR microscope if I remember correctly - there was a bunch of weird stuff like KNE-IR marked lenses. Maybe MXA20696 has better transmission or beam depolarization or something else.
Looking on the eBay listings for the very same LV-TI model heads, I see that there is indeed a different markings on them for tube lens. I believe that heads marked with UC symbol have ITL200 installed, while those heads that doesn't - MXA20696.

[RobertOToole]

Maybe, but I don't think costs is the most crucial factor here, rather than equipment specialization. My head comes from some special IR microscope if I remember correctly - there was a bunch of weird stuff like KNE-IR marked lenses. Maybe MXA20696 has better transmission or beam depolarization or something else.
Looking on the eBay listings for the very same LV-TI model heads, I see that there is indeed a different markings on them for tube lens. I believe that heads marked with UC symbol have ITL200 installed, while those heads that doesn't - MXA20696.

Very interesting Duke, thanks for the new info!

Best,

Robert