Ken
I take your point, however -
Panic not. A Yellow reflection does not necessarily mean SC. The
major determining factor IMO, and that of someone else whose post I
can't find for some reason, is the presence - or lack - of a green
coloured reflection.
If you have a green reflection present you definitely have MC. If
you have a strong predominant yellow reflection and no green, then in
all probability you have an SC on your hands. The one exception to
this is the 300mm f4.5. This has a predominant browny gold
reflection, and I thought for some time, no green. This puzzled me
for some time as the date code (white letters on matt black area near
rear element) on my example indicated it was made after MC was
introduced (courtesy of Frank VL's useful little table of dates of
when MC was introduced for various lenses). The other day I noticed
that a weak green reflection is visible in sunlight so the rule seems
to apply even for this lens.
Giles
PS Just found that corroborating post in my collection of digests
from when I had the list - here is the relevant snip.
-------------------------------------------------
But there are a fair number of companies who make it difficult to
tell. for instance, when Olympus first came out with multicoating,
they used the designation Zuiko MC for the multicoated lenses.
However, at some point all Zuiko lenses were multicoated (by around
1983 or 1984) and so the MC was dropped, and all lenses sold by
Olympus today are multicoated, but marked only Zuiko.
So, if you take a lens like the 28/2 Zuiko that originally was brought
to market in the 70's and was single-coated back then, it is by no
means obvious how to look at the lens and tell if it is single or
multicoated unless it was one produced in the 3-5 year period when
Zuiko MC was used as a designation.
however, if you know what to look for, you can tell. if you hold the
lens under a specular light source, a light fixture is fine,
fluorescent works best but isn't required, you will see a series of
reflections of the light fixture that appear to be inside the lens. a
single-coated lens will have all purple, all amber, or a combination
of purple and amber for all the reflections in the sequence. this is
because there are two materials that were commonly used for
single-coating, one is purple, the other amber, but sometimes lens
designers use the purple one on some elements and the amber one on
others to achieve good color correction. sometimes even both are used
on the same surface, like the 2-layer process used by Pentax on their
current lenses designated Takumar, but this is not multicoating.
with a multicoated lens, you will see a sequence of a number of
colors. with a Zuiko, you will see green and blue in addition to
purple and amber. Olympus changed their multicoating formula a few
times so it won't be the same for all multicoated Zuikos, but you will
always see blue and green reflections as well as purple and maybe
amber, on a multicoated lens, but only purple and/or amber on a
single-coated lens.
---------------------------------------------------------------
> SQUEEK
>
> ...sound of Pandora's box being opened...
>
> I've been looking over my bag of wonderful zuikos and other miscellaneous
> lens like items and discovered something of interest. What I thought were
> MC lenses are actually SC lenses. (sounds of gasping from the peanut
> gallery). The only true MC Zuiko lens in my bag is the 35-shift and
> 24/2.8. The Tokina ATX 35-70/2.8 is MC and so is the Soligar 200/2.8. But
> as I look at the other lenses which include a 100/2.8 and 50/1.4 I'm
> surprised to see YELLOW. Now there are other colors, such as green, but
> yellow is the primary coating. Of course, we all have learned that the
> yellow means SC in most cases.
>
> I was horrified! I immediately went to my files and started pulling sheet
> upon sheet of fujichromes out and started weeping when I realized that none
> of my prized images were any good now because they were taken with SC
> lenses. One image (30 second time exposure at F16) of a waterfall taken
> with the 100/2.8 was just too sharp. Another picture (11x17 hanging in my
> office) taken with the same lens is just aweful because I can make out the
> veins in the blades of grass taken 30 feet away.
>
> Then I realized that all of my beach pictures and backlit shots were trash
> too. In tears I pulled out about 50 sheets of images and cried because not
> a single shot had any flair or Newtons Rings. "HOW CAN THIS BE" I yelled!
> My wife immediately grabbed our daughter and ran out of the house--terrified.
>
> I sat in the middle of the floor a total mess. Thousands of once beautiful
> pictures surround me and cover the carpet. Years and years of hard work,
> love and time have gone into these images, not counting the thousands of
> dollars in film and processing. I'm ruined. I'll just give all of my
> camera equipment away, destroy the pictures and resort to life as a drummer.
>
> Why oh why did I use SC lenses for my pictures? Even the public service
> advertisements on TV say "Friends don't let friends use SC."
>
>
> My point is that over the last while now we've been discussing SC vs MC and
> people have been posting that they are looking for only MC versions of
> whatever lens. Yes, there are minute differences, but most differences
> mean very little. I've been extremely happy with the results of my SC
> 100/2.8 and SC 50/1.4 lenses. Go ahead and berate the 50/1.4 all you want,
> but it was sharper than the lens on my old Mamiya 645. If I can quantify
> any tangable difference between my SC lenses and the MC lenses it would be
> that the SC are just a bit warmer.
>
> Do I fight lens flair? Absolutely! Always have, always will. Frankly, I
> don't notice any real improvement with MC except the newtons rings are now
> pretty colors.
>
> If you are looking to build a "showcase" collection, fine, get the MC
> lenses. If you are happy with some of the finest lenses ever made for 35mm
> cameras then consider SC as well as the MC lenses.
>
> Ken (currently sorting 2000 unfiled slides-most taken with SC lenses) Norton
> Quincy Illinois.
>
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