I inherited a Schneider-Kreuznach 50mm f/4 enlarger from my father, for which I will have to find an m25 to m39 adapter…is it any good for scanning?
It’s going to depend upon what your expectations are to a certain extent. I’ve got the tiny 60mm f5.6 version, also with a 25mm thread and an adaptor. I don’t use it for camera scanning (I use an 80mm Rodagon mainly) but out of interest I did test it using the excellent Vlad’s Test Target with my Fuji X-T2 and at f8 I’d say that lens would be absolutely fine for camera scanning up to about 24MP on APS-C, it seemed to perform surprisingly well for such an old lens. Now that’s the 60mm so I can’t necessarily extend that to the 50mm but the Componons were a quality 6-element enlarging lens, later improved with the Componon-S range. The 80mm Componon-S is rated highly I believe. There are many other practical considerations like alignment, stability, flare, light source etc. that you need to get right before it would be the lens that was the limiting factor in my opinion.
Just to add a bit of detail for those who know Vlad’s Test Target, with my 24MP Fuji X-T2 at 1/15 sec - f8 my elderly 60mm f5.6 Componon just about resolves Group 0, Element 2 across the central 4 targets and Group -1, Element 6 in the corners and centre edges with no discernible chromatic aberration or smearing. I’d say that was a good result. There is always a bit of subjectivity involved so my personal definition of ‘clearly’ is when you can see that there are 3 separated horizontal lines and similarly 3 separated vertical lines in the target at that level and that for the next smallest line pairs you can’t see this with any certainty, they have become suffused with each other so that you can’t see if they are horizontal or vertical.
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Thank you, I’ll try that!