Rodie 55mm vs the SK 60mm

[JoeKitchen]

I need some advice on these lenses and which one you feel would be the better lens.  I am drawn to the 55 just because it is slightly wider and would give me a little more for interiors, but is the SK 60mm that much better in terms of sharpness?  Also the Rodie is more attractive due to the price. 

Also, does anyone have the graphs for the Rodie 55mm?  Rodenstock only lists the graphs for the 35mm and 105mm lengths for this particular series of lenses.  I am curious to see the light fall off and distortion graphs for this lens.  

[Chris Barrett]

I haven't critically tested sharpness on my 55  but it is a damn good lens!  I have done a test with it on my M2 (view camera) with full shifts...  35mm up & 35mm down (gave me almost fully usable image).  I would say it has an easy 30mm shift in any direction.  That's damn good on a lens this short with an MFDB.

For as good as it is, it's dirt cheap.  And did I mention that it's damn good?

[Paul2660]

Joe:

I have shot both and own the Schneider 60mm.  Both are excellent lenses but I went with the Schneider.  Both have huge image circles and allow for excellent horizontal shift and rise and fall.

Both of the lenses have a rather shallow DOF until stopped down.  The Schneider seems to like F11 to F16 for my work.  I have taken it to F8 with tilt.  Shifting the Schneider was where I found it to be a bit better than the Rodenstock 55mm.  The 60mm will go to 25mm before you really start to see much saturation fall off and detail smearing.  I have taken it to 30mm and it was still usable.  For extreme shifts the physical CF is a help but it you don't plan on shifting it more than 15mm odds are you won't need the CF.

On my shoots, I found the Rodenstock a cooler lens, the Schneiders seem warm to me.  Contrast appeared better with the Schneider and it will pull in some amazing details.  When I worked with the 55mm,  I felt that the 60mm was sharper on center and markedly sharper on shifts past 15mm.  

As you point out the cost if a big difference between the two, the 55mm being a "bargin" relatively speaking, also there seems to be more of them used on the market.  

Paul Caldwell

[JoeKitchen]

Thanks for the replies here.  Insofar as sharpness falling off in the corners, how bad is it?  I am use to the sharpness fall off of DSLR lenses and must say that when you MF users post examples of unusable sharpness, I laugh most of the time.  In some instances, the loss of sharpness is still better than say the center of the Canon 45mm ts.