[sanking]

Mike,

No, the earliest G-Clarons are a Dagor design, a 6-glass, 2 group lens, or a lens comprised of 2 cemented triplets. Dagors never changed in the design of the groups while the G-Claron did.

Single coated lenses have more contrast than uncoated, and at least to me, modern multicoated lenses have more contrast than single coated. The effects of coating boosting contrast was mentioned by Ansel Adams in one of his books, and he suggests that development may have to be altered because of it.

Cheers, Steve

Some years ago I owned and used mostly vintage lenses for my ULF work. That included several uncoated Dagors and Protars. When I replaced one of the uncoated Dagors with a modern multi-coated Nikkor M lens I had to decrease development time by about 25% to account for the much greater contrast of the multi-coated lens.

That said, the single coated Dagor design G-Claron lenses are great value. Late model coated Dagors of the same vintage, Kern for example, generally sell for a lot more than the Dagor type G-Clarons, in part I think because not many people are aware of the fact that early G-Claron are in fact Dagors.

As for the ultimate in contrast, try a multi-coated Dagor, say the 14" Kern Dagor or the Schneider 550 XXL. With only four air to glass surfaces and multi-coating you get a very contrasty negative with these lenses.

Sandy King