A few samples from a Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 50mm f/2.8 lens

It was a few months ago that I bought an Edixa-Mat Reflex B SLR camera which came with a Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar lens fitted, and I thought I would try fitting it to my Ricoh GXR A12 module and get a few sample shots to see how it performs.

The Xenar lens is an M42 mount unit, but it has a somewhat non-standard auto/manual lever which fouls on the mount adapter, so in order to fit the lens it needs to be switched to the manual position. Once this is done, the lever is retracted into the lens body, and the aperture can be controlled manually using the aperture ring in the usual way.

The lens is a Tessar design, with a max aperture of f/2.8 and a close focus of about 0.5 meter. The aperture consists of 6 blades, and the focus ring has quite a short travel which makes it relatively easy to focus, especially with the GXR’s excellent focus peaking mode (mode 2). There are some pictures of the lens in the post about the Edixa linked to above.

These pictures were all taken on a walk this morning using Shutter Priority and Auto ISO which allowed me to set both aperture (on the lens) and shutter speed (on the camera) and the camera to set the ISO. The images were imported into Lightroom and processed using my normal processing steps.

Overall I’m quite impressed with the quality of the pictures this combination of lens and camera has produced. The colours produced are nice, and the contrast and definition also very good – some of which may be down to the lack of AA filter on the GXR M-Mount sensor module.

Interestingly, although I only paid £26 for the Edixa-Mat with this lens fitted, if I look on eBay for the lens itself, I find it is considerably more than that to buy a copy. Looks like one of those occasions where you get a better bargain buying the pair together.