Enlarging lenses: Why You need one and what makes Them so Good

If you are not familiar with enlarging lenses they are an excellent way to get into high magnification close-up photography for larger than life-size or beyond the 1X range images. Macro lenses normally work up to life-size or 1X but a 50mm enlarging lens can give you good, even great image quality up to four times life-size or 4X . The best part is that you can pick up a very high quality enlarging lens for very little, just a fraction of the cost of a new macro lens. For the 50mm Componon S lens you see below, I paid $98 new and still in the box, and it is one of the sharpest enlarging lenses out there. Good clean copies of this can be found easily on Ebay for about $50-60.

For more information on the Componon-S and how to get the most out of it see the links below.

For the 50mm Componon S enlarging lens:

https://www.closeuphotography.com/schneider-50mm-componon-s

For the Componon S Industrial version:

https://www.closeuphotography.com/schneider-componon-s-50mm-v-mount/

Schneider Componon S 50mm f/2.8 and Nikon D500 at 2X, 1/60 s, f4.5, ISO 64, single SBR-200 flash, MM-11 microscope stand.

This image was made in the studio on a vertical Nikon MM-11 microscope stand with a single flash and lots of diffusion. I shot this at f/4.5 since this is the lenses sharpest aperture and to avoid losing sharpness to diffraction.