I am wondering about picking up some old Rollei (Rolleinar) 35mm lenses to use with an adapter on EOS. Some of them go pretty cheap, and they do fit in my budget. I was wondering if anyone has used them, however, and could give me some opinions or answer a few questions. What is the general quality level like, compared to the Zeiss Contax lenses?--in particular, how is the 21mm? Some of them are listed with different numbers of "pins"--will this affect compatibility? I did handle a version of the 50mm 1.4--it did not stop down manually without pushing the pin in the back, so if I wanted to use them would I have to find a way to permanently push in or engage the pin, and is that a problem? A search on the forums indicated in the past some people had problems with adapaters--is that still the case, and can anyone share some opinions or experiences? And finally, do any of those lenses run the risk of hitting the mirror (I have a 5d mk II). Thanks for any help.
I have used 2 Rollei lenses,
1) Rolleinar 55mm f1.4
1) Planar 50mm f1.8
I got both very cheap, less than $10 each.
First, Rollei mount lenses dont reach to infinity. But the lenses almost reaches to infinity. I have heard some people using thin adapter to get to infinity, but my experience with 2 different adapters is not same (you might have noticed, I am cheapo )
About Rolleinar, this was low end brand by Rollei, the lenses were manfactured by thrid parties. Try to avoid, unless you know the real manufacturer. I have Rolleinar MC 55mm f1.4, manufactured by Tomoika. Also available in M42 mount with different brands (Sears, Vivitar etc).Recommended if you dont have issue related to near infinity. My set on Flickr, http://flickr.com/photos/asbalyan/sets/72157603979429726/
Same way, Voigtländer Color-Ultron is the cheapo brand (line) from Voigtländer lenses (manufactured by third part for Voigtländer brand). Voigtländer Color-Ultron 55mm f1.4 is same lens (detailed above).
Can browse some results here, http://forum.manualfocus.org/viewtopic.php?id=9294
Planar 50mm f1.8, its the same lens as CZ planar 50mm f1.7. There are 2 version, one manufactured either in Germany or Japan and other in Singapore. I heard, Singapore manufactured lenses had real quality issues.
I have the Zeiss 16mm Fishey lens in Rollei mount. It only reaches infinity using the Kindai/CQ adapter. The lens is pretty much the same optical formula as the C/Y version (see pebbleplace for a review) yet it can be found at a pretty good price (I paid $400 for it 2 years ago).
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