What would you pay for a Sironar S?

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These lenses have always been expensive and now film is having a mini revival there are a few models on ebay. The prices now truly are ridiculous and they dont get sold and just sit there forever. I've even put some sensible offers in but people will not budge
Are they waiting for some young hipster to come along and pay the price? I think they are all too busy buying Mju 2s
I'm just bitter really as I want to try these lenses out to see if they are as good as everyone says and a lens that is used and loved must be better than on a shelf never to be sold
 
I think that's probably an unanswerable question. There are questions about condition, and focal length - some are going to cost more than others.

My own opinion is coloured by what I expect of a lens. If you make a 20x16 print from a 5 x 4 negative, that's the same degree of enlargement as a 6x4 enprint from 35mm. How much difference will you see between lenses on a print that size?

Schneider's Symmars went from Symmar, through various iterations up to the Super Symmar XLs. My first LF lens was a Symmar made in the 1950s from the serial number. It was sharp enough for me not to need more. Yes, the coating wasn't up to modern multicoating, so more prone to flare if you didn't watch out, and probably lower contrast. On that point, Paul Strand had one of his uncoated lenses coated, and found he had to reduce his developing times to compensate for the higher contrast. Turning it round, use an uncoated or single coated lens and just up the developing time...

I have two Sironars, an N in 150mm and an S in 360mm focal lengths. The 360mm is BIG, HEAVY and not to be considered taking out so long as I have an alternative. For a high price, you may be paying for the covering power, useful if you use a lot of movements or want to use it on a larger format.

As to better - well, that depends on the question "better for what purpose"? I have a 355mm Commercial Ektar lens, as used by Karsh for portraiture on a 10x8 camera. I had it with me on one occasion when I met up with another forum member. He named it "the discus" because of its size. Lovely circular aperture for the bokeh, if that matters. But carry it around all day in a back pack when I have smaller and lighter alternatives - no thanks.

What I can say with certainty is that LF lenses aren't being made now, and prices will only go up in the foreseeable future. There's a web site by Kerry Thalman that has a page on "Future Classics" in LF lenses; one person said that that site single handedly doubled the price of the lenses it picked out. Spoiler - two Sironar S lenses in it (135mm and 150mm).

Ultimately, what I would pay is going to depend on what I can afford and how much I want one. And these days, I don't actually expect to see any technical improvement from a new/different lens. But more coverage and a lighter weight. (Coverage matters more to me as I use 5x4, 5x7 and 10x8 cameras.)
 
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I'd better add - I don't use colour in LF. You won't find it as easy to increase contrast by upping the development time in colour! So, a more modern lens could be better.

And one other point from a book on optics*: when stopped down, unless decentred (= badly assembled) any modern lens will be diffraction limited so far as resolution goes. So you're paying for size, weight, coverage, contrast.

* I think Applied Photographic Optics by Sidney Ray, from memory.
 
I never thought of it like that in terms of relative enlargement, ill stick with the fujis for now
 
You can thank years of old forum and blog posts extolling how perfect these lenses are for that.

I have two Apo Sironar S lenses (a 135 that's matched with the rangefinder on my Linhof Tech and a 150) and while they are nice, the 150mm Apo Sironar N which I used before was very close and tbh I couldn't tell much of a difference. My own technique and actual vision was/is always the limiting factor. Personally I'd pay about 2x more for an S than an N but even then it's extremely hard to justify. I only ended up with them because the 135 came with the kit (at a really good price) and I got the 150mm + a stack of colour and b/w sheet film in a trade for a camera I wasn't using enough. The 135 and 150 were going for around £600-800 about 3-4 years ago and I sold my Sironar N for about £300 in the same period.

I don't think it's many new LF shooters buying them, at least the ones picking up an Intrepid kit. I think those ebay sellers are waiting for a certain type of buyer who shoots top end equipment in the smaller formats (think Leica, Hasselblad, Mamiya 7, Contax 645) where the sticker shock for expensive equipment is long gone. I suppose I would fit that description but I got in before prices exploded!

The bottom line is, I don't think the lens matters much once you start looking into modern plasmats from the big 4 makers (Fuji/Nikon/Rodenstock/Schneider). A few years ago I saw an Alec Soth show at the Science Museum here in London. Soth uses 8x10 and the prints were stunning, 50x40 inches and they just had gobs of detail. It was a great show from a technical standpoint (I was more moved by the actual content though), but he shoots most of his work with a 'humble' Nikon 300mm. I also saw mural sized Avedon prints at the Gagosian at around the same time and he used Schneiders and Fujis. It's all about the vision and execution!
 
I would prefer NOT to give a shameless plug for my web site, but to save me a lot of typing, you might want to cast your eye over the list of sites contained on this page

Lenses and Shutters – Batey Fine Art Photography

batey.photography batey.photography

Specifically, find Chris Perez.
 
Since I'm thinking of shows I've seen, Chris Killip has one at The Photographer's Gallery right now. Again, the prints and the vision are exquisite.
 
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Shameless plug away! the more knowledge the better!
 
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