Soft Schneider Arriflex-Cinegon 1,4/16 (Arri Standard Mount)

[Marc Roessler]

I have a Schneider Cinegon 1,4/16 here, real nice condition, no lens damage, no haze etc... but it's always been quite a bit soft, especially when compared to it's 10mm and 25mm companions.
It has the strange square shaped diaphragm opening, I've also been wondering what's up with that one (the f2 16mm Cinegons have a more "normal" one).

In your experiences, by design, is this lens notably softer than the others when used at T2.0 or even wide open?
Softness is not enough to be noticeable on the grainy Arri 16S ground glass, bit the difference is definitely there when looking at a print or a scan, and it's bugging me.

By the way, is there anyone in Germany who still does checkup/service of these old lenses?

Best,

Marc

[Dom Jaeger]

Fast lenses will be computed differently and can often have some design compromises to achieve the faster speed compared to a similar lens computed for a slower f stop max. At full aperture an old fast lens like this will usually have aberrations that don't clean up until stopped down several stops. So I often find an f/1.4 lens stopped down to f/2 doesn't look as sharp as a similar focal length f/2 lens used wide open.

I also believe the f/1.4 version of Schneider's 16mm Cinegon was originally designed for 1" CCTV so it didn't need to resolve as well as lenses designed for 16mm. 

I don't have an f/1.4 16mm Schneider to analyse and compare with other Schneiders, so take this as speculative opinion.

[Marc Roessler]

Thanks for the input, Dom!

What's puzzling to me: the accompanying 25mm is also an f/1.4 lens and is super sharp, same for the 10mm 1.8.
But it may indeed be a problem with the lens design itself. Will try to do some more tests stopped down beyond f/2.

[Steve Switaj]

Hmm...

I have an old Arri St on a shelf and it has one of the Schneider 10/1.8's on it with this same thing going on. 

The lens came to me in a batch with some other stuff a while ago, so I popped it on the camera to check it out and it was... well... just never sharp (even accounting for the fact that the St finder is not a spectacular place to be judging lens performance in the first place).

The Arri is just a display piece, and I have no other place to use a standard-mount s16 lens,  so it doesn't bother me - but I've always thought it was weird because other than the sharpness thing, it's in really good condition. It shows no signs of being abused or dropped, the glass is clear, there's nothing thunking around inside,  and the focus and iris are still really smooth even after probably three decades of non-use.

Usually, there's an external clue if a lens has been mistreated enough to throw something off this badly, but not on this one.

I always noticed experienced olde-timers giving Schneider lenses the side-eye. Did it come from the factory like this?

Go figure.

[Brian Drysdale]

Many years ago, I shot night scenes using the 16mm f1.4, it was definitely soft when wide open. This was a brand new lens.

It had rather nice circular lens flare, which worked when driving down the road with the street lamps flaring in and out - in the final film the music beat matched the flares.