It was very hot yesterday afternoon here in Parma. I had to go out and do some errands. So, I stopped by one of my favorite Gelato stores for a cool down treat. Seated near me was this amazing Russian girl studying here at Parma University. She agreed to a portrait if I would send here a copy. She was already seated next to a window so I shot the portrait in that light. Luckily I had one of my favorite people lenses on my M11 yesterday.
1955 vintage Nippon Kongyu Tokyo LTM f2.5 3.5 cm, Recent auction find, a mint appearing lens, testing to adapted to M11 EV1 with LLL ltm adapter, film to follow. Very tiny. view in morning light in Anchorage view in morning light in Anchorage View in morning light in Anchorage AK over Cook Inlet from home. No sharpening or denoise applied. The lens is acceptably sharp even at 60 mp but not excessively so with a lot of softness at distance, look at boat detail, distortion (look at bricks) is good. Color rendering is nice. This is F4 that boosts performance over its native F2.5. Needs to be shot on film as it is a film era lens of the 1950s and on BW as its designers intended. On my agenda.
Yes it is tiny and looks great, I will be also using it on my film cameras, probably mostly on film although I think the dig is attractive, it obviously doesnt quite resolve to 60 mp M11 but the results are atill compelling. The single coat, lack of distortion, center sharpness with falling off toward corners and its render all a nice package. I posted this pic because there is a lot of shadow variation with the color plus the glow of the metal in the building adjacent, then the distant image is less detailed but I think as they say sharp enough for the image. I think the lens would be compelling in something like a temple in Japan, since it is a Nikkor. I just got it, so I need to do film tests. It probably should be used mostly for BW or at least I thought, but I like its color output at least in this scene and on high res dig, it is overperforming my expectations.
