Beseler HD lenses really APO-Rodagons?

[chip j]

I saw a 50mm 2.8 Besler HD lens described on E-Bay as an APO-Rodagon. Does anyone Know anything about this? I have 50 & 80 Rodagons and HDs; the HDs cost considerably more. I made a handful of prints (8x10) with the 50 HD a long time ago, and I did notice that it was unusally sharp.

[Fred Aspen]

I have both a Beseler HD and Rodenstock Rodagon. The Beseler is physically identical to the standard Rodagon, just re-badged. AFAIK, it is not an APO Rodagon.

[craigclu]

Fred's depiction is also how I remember this to be. They were the 6 element Rodagons which are good, solid optics, generally. I have both the Rodagon and the APO and the APO shows a slight advantage at more extreme enlargements. Because they perform best close to wide open, they require a well-aligned enlarger to perform best with little forgiveness covered up by smaller ƒ stops..

[chip j]

Thanks, guys. But I still keep wonering why a rebadged lens cost more than the oringinal?

[Patrick Robert James]

The best Beseler lenses were some of the Color Pros, rebadged Computar DL lenses. Not all of the Color Pros were Computar lenses though. The ones that were had a blue coating.

[EASmithV]

Not to be confused with a beslar POS enlarging lens...

[Neil Poulsen]

Were the Beseler HD's Apo Rodagons or Apo Gerogons? I heard that the Beseler 8x10 lenses were Apo Gerogons. In fact, I believe that Bob Soloman told me that a few years ago.

The Apo Rodagons are Rodenstock's flagship enlarging lenses. In the same way that they don't repackage the Apo-Sironar-S lenses as 3rd party, I doubt that they would repackage the Apo Rodagons as 3rd party.

[chip j]

Thanks. Ithink Rodenstock did rebadge some high-quality optics under the Calumet name.