NikonGear'23
Gear Talk => Lens Talk => Topic started by: Macro_Cosmos on August 31, 2019, 11:31:31
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I was browsing stuff on a popular Chinese flea site and came across a Noct-Nikkor with weird coatings. The seller claim he's handled 10 Noct-nikkors and this is a first.
Pic 1 & 2: Odd blue coatings
Pic 3 & 4: Normal looking coating under room lights
Pic 5 & 6: Normal looking coating under the sun
Pic 7: Normal looking coating, window light
Any ideas? Is this a modified lens?
The seller claims that the resolution is a bit higher, less contrast, colour reproduction is drastically different, and does worse against bright light (more glare).
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Actually that blue coating looks like an old-type single coating, which leads to some odd color reproduction at times...
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Obviously, the first two pictures were shot outdoors, and the lens surfaces are reflecting the blue sky. And the images #3 and 7 show the front part of the lens with a protection (?) filter.
The Noct with 9-blade aperture that I had during the film days had the familiar green multi-coating, which appears to coincide with the coating seen in the images #5 and 6.
Around the time I had my Noct, I heard that some samples (from a certain time periods?) tended to suffer from flare. But my own sample was fairly contrasty except in strongly backlit situations.
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We all know that the apparent color of multiple layer AR coatings varies with the viewing angle.
Since these example photos are shot from inconsistent camera angles and under light sources that are different in color, angle, and softness, they are not helpful to illustrate the poster's claimed observation.
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Hello Macro_Cosmos,
difficult to say if it's a coating problem or reflections of trees (?) on your first two pictures of the Noct Nikkor...
The other 4 pictures don't show the same problem, that's why I thought it could be reflections...but really impossible to say !
Hope you can find a solution !
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Actually that blue coating looks like an old-type single coating, which leads to some odd color reproduction at times...
I have a very old Kodak scanner lens assembly with the bluish coating, even under room lights.
So yeah, could be old coatings?
Edit: I'll try to get a more colour accurate shot of the lens... it's looks purple on my screen, phone cameras suck.
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Obviously, the first two pictures were shot outdoors, and the lens surfaces are reflecting the blue sky. And the images #3 and 7 show the front part of the lens with a protection (?) filter.
The Noct with 9-blade aperture that I had during the film days had the familiar green multi-coating, which appears to coincide with the coating seen in the images #5 and 6.
Around the time I had my Noct, I heard that some samples (from a certain time periods?) tended to suffer from flare. But my own sample was fairly contrasty except in strongly backlit situations.
That could certainly be the case. But I do have lenses with blue coatings. Either the seller is dramatising his findings showing cherrypicked photos or it's an oddball.
We all know that the apparent color of multiple layer AR coatings varies with the viewing angle.
Since these example photos are shot from inconsistent camera angles and under light sources that are different in color, angle, and softness, they are not helpful to illustrate the poster's claimed observation.
Yeah that's generally true. I'm not making the claim but the seller, I don't have $4000 lying around, unfortunately. Oh and it's sold too. Maybe I should just ask him about it.
It could just be the sky being reflected.
Hello Macro_Cosmos,
difficult to say if it's a coating problem or reflections of trees (?) on your first two pictures of the Noct Nikkor...
The other 4 pictures don't show the same problem, that's why I thought it could be reflections...but really impossible to say !
Hope you can find a solution !
My first thought was the sky reflected, but I do have a lens that shows similar cast even indoors, which led to this post.
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I have a very old Kodak scanner lens assembly with the bluish coating, even under room lights.
So yeah, could be old coatings?
Edit: I'll try to get a more colour accurate shot of the lens... it's looks purple on my screen, phone cameras suck.
The old Nikkor-Q 135/3.5 has medium blue coatings on the front element. The Series-E 100/2.8 is similar. Other lenses from the same era have pale blue-pink coatings, depending on the viewing angle. The later Nikkor-P 105/2.5 has blue-purple coatings similar to the Kodak scanner lens shown here. This coating is darker which leads me to suspect it might be more than a single-layer coating. The early multi-coated Nikkors tend to have deep green, orange, red or blue-purple coatings which change colour depending on the viewing angle.
The coatings on the Noct look normal to me, typical of AI Nikkors. The first two pictures showing the "blue" coatings is most likely due to a combination of the the particular viewing angle, and overcast sky giving a cool colour balance.