Lenses for Digital Professional Photography

Digital photography may be superior to conventional analog photography: digital photography is faster, cheaper for high photo quantities, it makes retouching easier, allows more effective manipulation and often has a higher quality. However, it makes different and sometimes much higher demands on the lens because of the special technical requirements of the sensors (e.g. regular pixel grid, planar sensor surface and a 2 mm thick protective and filter glass plate in front of it). Only by meeting these requirements, the theoretically possible quality increase is to be realized in practice.

Lenses for adjustable technical cameras with digital backs must offer really large image angles for perspective controls and lens swing and tilt and must ensure the very best imaging quality right up to their image circle margin. The resolving power and the contrast must be at their optimum even at large apertures (f/8 to f/11, when used with the relatively small area sensors even from f/5.6) to ensure that diffraction and color noise do not impair sharpness.

Contrary to roll and sheet films, the correction of curvature of field has to meet the highest demands because of the virtually perfectly planar sensor surface or scanned plane. Furthermore, the lenses must not generate any color fringes or any visible distortion. All these demands of digital professional photography are met to perfection by the Rodenstock lenses for digital photography.

HR Digaron-S
The new Rodenstock HR Digaron-S lenses (former name: Apo-Sironar digital HR) with a 70 mm image circle (80 mm for a  focal lengths of 180 mm) for sensor sizes from 24x36 mm up to 33x44 mm provide excellent sharpness and brilliance already from open aperture (f/4 to f/5.6). For reduced camera movement they are also recommended for sensor sizes up to 37x49 mm and without any camera movement even for sensor sizes up to 36x56 mm or 40x54 mm.

HR Digaron-W
The lens series  HR Digaron-W with an image circle from 90 mm to 125 mm is the first choice for large sensors from 37x49 mm up to 36x56 mm or 40x54 mm and for technical cameras, if parallel lens shift and lens swing and tilt require large camera movement. Currently this new series comprises the focal lengths 40, 70 and 90 mm. In spring 2009 it will be supplemented by a 50 mm lens, and further lenses will follow in the near future.

For an optimum performance of the highest-resolution sensors with up to 60 megapixels and a pixel pitch down to 6 µm, the optical design of both series HR Digaron-S and HR Digaron-W includes the thickness of the sensor glass plate.

Apo-Sironar digital / Apo-Macro-Sironar digital
Both lens series Apo-Sironar digital and Apo-Macro-Sironar digital (the latter is optimized for large scales) provide large image circles and leave enough space for camera movement. These lenses are ideal for use with digital scan backs as well as with chip backs having larger formats or for being used in the macro-scan mode for larger formats by stitching multiple shots made with laterally shifted back from one shot to the next. Resolving power is designed for a pixel pitch down to 9 µm. These lenses are the perfect solution for photographers who use both digital photography and roll film.

Accessories
For the use of these lenses with bellowsless panoramic or shift cameras we offer our focusing device “Focus Mount”. For the wide-angle lenses HR Digaron-S 23 mm and 28 mm we offer specially adjusted center filters.