p.173 #2 · What is your most recent (alt) lens purchase?
My last post here reported these lenses - now I follow up with my opinions:
Vivitar 28mm f/2 Close Focus - Very good lens, very sharp from wide open.
Meyer Optik Görlitz Helioplan 40mm f/4.5 - Nothing special, acceptable.
Meyer-Optik Görlitz Orestor 100mm f/2.8 - Great optics, poor construction and a stupid button for stop down.
Sankyô Kôki Komura 200mm f/3.5 - Surprisingly good bokeh and colors. Plenty sharp enough.
Now, since then I have sinned again. Purchased these but not yet used:
Very early Pentacon 2.8/135 preset
Helios-44 with 13 blade diaphragm
Domiplan 2.8/50 - Not expecting much
Trioplan 2.9/50 Altix mount. Have to fashion an adapter.
p.173 #3 · What is your most recent (alt) lens purchase?
Bubble is single handily keeping the camera business afloat with his purchases.
Latest for me is the a7 with the 28-70, the 35 and 55 primes. Also decided to splurge for the Zeiss filters this time as opposed to my standard B+W filters and at least the packaging is more impressive.
p.173 #5 · What is your most recent (alt) lens purchase?
Bought and returned a Sony Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar FE 24-70mm f4 ZA OSS - a frighteningly bad lens.
I also picked up another Zeiss Distagon 21mm f2.8 ZE - if I can find a workable copy of the Metabones adapter, I want to do some side-by-side comparisons with my C/Y-mount Distagon.
p.173 #13 · What is your most recent (alt) lens purchase?
Bubble wrote:
how is the 50mm macro?
I just picked up the macro yesterday on my lunch break. I haven't had time to run it through its paces, but here's what I've noticed from the short time I've played with it:
- The build of the lens feels quite solid. Not quite comparable to the ZF/ZE line of lenses where the lens felt like a little tank in your hand, but more of a small, but dense and and tightly working unit. I really like the feel of it.
- The rubber grip kind of threw me off a bit since this is my first Touit lens. The rubber has a nice smoothness to it while maintaining a "catchy" grip. It's a nice texture, and doesn't feel cheap.
- I have it paired with my X-T1 and battery grip. With the grip, the lens feels well balanced and easy to support when holding in landscape and portrait orientations. I've yet to remove the grip, but my feeling is that it will feel front (lens) heavy without it (the grip).
- The lens hood is plastic, but rather thick. It doesn't feel cheap. I just wish the lettering on the hood (and lens too) faced upward as opposed to on the bottom when mounted. It definitely makes the lens look much larger with it on.
- The lens cap is a major step forward from their ZE/ZF lens caps. I've owned many ZE lenses, and this is the first time that I will be using the zeiss lens cap. For my Canon Zeiss I would replace the lens cap with a Nikon one (haha) as I felt Nikon's lens caps were better than even Canon's caps.
- Rear lens cap is simple, but I might replace it with a Fuji brand x-mount rear cap. The Zeiss cap sort of feels "loose".
- There isn't a distance scale on the lens. This might bother some people, but for my macro use I'd never miss it since I rarely use the distance scales on AF lenses. For manual focusing, what you see in the EVF is what you get and since the MF mechanism is electronic (fly by wire), you can't be hasty when manual focusing.
The auto focus isn't going to win any awards and even has a slight pause when the EVF is zoomed in when half pressing the shutter to focus. It feels like a second pause before focus snaps. Doesn't bother me as this won't be used for BIF or tiny toddlers running circle around kitchen tables (lol).
I was VERY impressed with the MFD of this lens. I was so close to my subject, that I felt as if I sneezed or had a light cough, the lens would touch as I was around an inch or two away. This is a great way of intimidating your subject!
I haven't uploaded any of my brief captures yet, so I don't have any comments on color, sharpness, OOF areas and the like. I've read that CA and distortion are VERY well controlled though.
p.173 #16 · What is your most recent (alt) lens purchase?
I just picked up a Canon fd 300 2.8 from KEH in BGN condition. Pretty worn on the exterior, but the glass looks good and focus is smooth.
At 2.8, one of the aperture blades doesn't completely retract, but all the blades close up correctly at each stop...I don't think this is going to be an issue.
There is some rotational play in the rear section (from the rotating tripod mount)...maybe a bit more than I'd like, but I can probably live with it...for others that have this lens, is this an issue on your copy?
Here's a couple of shots (posted in other threads here):
One of the things I'm excited about with this lens is that there is enough flange-sensor backfocus distance that I can connect my monochrome astronomical CCD camera for astrophotography (QHY9-M)...as soon as I can figure out an fd to t-thread adapter. There's not enough distance for the filter wheel, but since the drop-in filter is a 48mm thread, it I can use the filters in the lens instead! :-)
p.173 #17 · What is your most recent (alt) lens purchase?
astrodave wrote:
I just picked up a Canon fd 300 2.8 from KEH in BGN condition. Pretty worn on the exterior, but the glass looks good and focus is smooth.
At 2.8, one of the aperture blades doesn't completely retract, but all the blades close up correctly at each stop...I don't think this is going to be an issue.
There is some rotational play in the rear section (from the rotating tripod mount)...maybe a bit more than I'd like, but I can probably live with it...for others that have this lens, is this an issue on your copy?
I don't have any rotational play in mine at all Dave. It's very solid.
Can't wait to see the astro shots, though. What kind of tripod head do you use for long lenses and astro?
p.173 #19 · What is your most recent (alt) lens purchase?
crazeazn wrote:
any of yall have the voigtlander close focus adapter? how do you like it?
I have the VME Close Up Adapter. It's construction is solid without any play on my a7. The close focusing helicoid is smooth, but a bit stiff. What really seals the deal is the ability to lock the helicoid at infinity and when fully extended. If you're on the fence about it, I would definitely make the purchase.
p.173 #20 · What is your most recent (alt) lens purchase?
Molson, you could throw the Voigt 28mm 2.8 into the mix, like to know how you think it compares!
We have been in Alberta for the last 8 days, first time, your province is beautiful
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