This lens was posted/shared in the Shoten Tribute 01 thread but figured I'd make a dedicated thread to share some samples as I finally got some time to take some shots with it. Shoten states that it was inspired by the Kino Plasmat 5cm F1.5 and a young developer commissioned DJ Optical to make it. From there Shoten Kobo had 70 made as a limited release, though I'm not sure if they meant limited to 70 of each color black/silver or 70 total but it sold out fairly quickly. Being a DJ Optical product it may find its way to being re-released under a different name at some point.
Wide open there is a massive amount of glow, swirl, coma, vignetting, and distortion as well as flaring quite easily. Changing to f/2 increases contrast and reduces artifacts significantly. Ienjoy the character the lens brings and hope to soon bring it out at a time with better lighting and subject matter (cars have a lot of reflective parts that results in a lot of aberrations wide open).
All shots (should be) no post processing other than exporting from Lightroom as large JPEGS and having Adobe's color profile applied. Everything shot on an M11-P and the second day of shooting (the car event) there was a Hoya HD3 CPL on the lens. The car event shots I have tried to include a lot of shots that are taken both wide open at f/1.1 and f/2. All shots were taken in pretty harsh lighting at around 10am-noon aside from some indoor shots.
Took the lens out again and unfortunately it looks like my copy is mis-calibrated and front focusing when using the rangefinder. I missed this the first day due to using the Visoflex the majority of the time and in some shots I may have just chalked up some of the blur to the aberrations. I have reached out to Shoten via eBay (where they created a listing for me to purchase) and hopefully they will take care of me being a couple days out of the return window. I like the lens so hoping for a repair or replacement, though they have been sold out for a bit. I also have two other lenses on order direct through their website including their TRIBUTE 01 recreation of the Zunow and the DK-Optic IMPASTOLITE recreation of the Septac so hoping the service is good but will report back when there's an update.
Here's a couple more shots showing the rendering as well as a shot showing rangefinder vs live view focusing on Gogeta's eyes.
My LAILENS is back in Japan for repair/adjustment. Shoten was very nice and extremely quick and helpful in support requests, but did state it could be 1-2 months turnaround time.
Last night another one popped up on eBay but as of today it is already sold. It looks like that one also is suffering from front focusing issues as in the seller notes it states “To focus on infinity, turn the focus ring a little further after the two images in the rangefinder align.”
Shame this seems to maybe be an issue with production, especially given the low amount produced. I do really like the lens so hoping it isn't too long before I can have it back in my hands.
endergemini wrote:
My LAILENS is back in Japan for repair/adjustment. Shoten was very nice and extremely quick and helpful in support requests, but did state it could be 1-2 months turnaround time.
Hope you get the lens back sooner than later. Your experience is similar to mine. Shoten has great customer service.
Were the photos taken in some sort of anime bar/pub? I watched every episode of the first three Dragon Ball (OG, Z, and GT) series myself.
kuujinbo wrote:
Hope you get the lens back sooner than later. Your experience is similar to mine. Shoten has great customer service.
Were the photos taken in some sort of anime bar/pub? I watched every episode of the first three Dragon Ball (OG, Z, and GT) series myself.
Very impressed with Shoten's customer service so far, both through eBay and through direct contact via email for other orders. I also like the fact they are bringing a lot of unique converted lenses and adapters through their own brand as well.
This was a local poke + crepe restaurant that also has a small bar/taproom area with decent amount of CA bay area beers on draft. They have some hand painted art on the inside and outside depicting various anime characters. I've watched almost all of the various Dragon Ball series/movies, though I have been meaning to rewatch GT and some of the older movies as I watched a lot of them when I was younger and don't remember much. I have held off on the newest Daima series but will probably watch it soon now that the fully dubbed version has been released. Dragon Ball is a series I prefer dubbed vs subbed due to getting used to the voices from Toonami when I was a kid haha
