Found this lens last Sunday on the Dutch Fotografica fair. It was priced at € 20, I offered € 15 but the English seller didn’t understand me and said I could have it for 10. Deal struck.
It’s my second sample; my first one‘s diaphragm broke down later, the leaves got messed up in each other. It’s one of the few SR-mount lenses without an automatic diaphragm, it features a black ring to set the aperture and a chrome ring to open up for focussing or close down to the preset value for taking the picture. It was meant as a budget lens at the time, together with some other preset lenses like the Tele Rokkor-QE 200mm 1:5. You’d think it’s not heavy given its f/4 speed but it’s still 375g, filter thread is 46mm and closest focus is 1.5m.
The test pictures show that it’s a bit flary and not really pin-sharp wide-open in the center, corners aren’t sharp and the whole image shows purple fringing. Stopping down to f/5.6 improves the center but the corners need f/11 to get really sharp. A rather unspectacular performance but useful nevertheless. You might like the general moderate-contrast rendering which is much unlike modern lenses, it lends an atmosphere of yesteryear to the pictures.
And now for some trees against the sky, a demanding test for any lens.
