The Dead Lens Club!

[farfisa]

I recently picked up a $10 as-is lens in the marketplace. It's a Juplen 135mm, which nobody's heard of, aparently. Google it, and you may find this post and not much else.

The seller didn't really know much about lenses, but I took a chance--shipping was actually more than the cost of the lens!

I took it out of its case, blew the disintegrated felt off of it and inspected it. Noticed right away that it had a busted element inside, so I wasn't hopeful.



But, hey, we've all seen worse, right?

So I put in the M42 adapter and started screwing the lens in. Seems the thread got bashed up a bit too, so it's not going all the way in (and the adapter cost more than the lens, so I lose infinity, no big deal.

It's a very cool looking lens, stainless and black, with an interesting aperture control near the front.



The lens cap is also cool, though the filter ring is damaged, so it won't go in. No problem. Still cool!



So, I take it into the back yard and point it at the pear tree, and it doesn't do a bad job. I would have stopped down a bit, but couldn't. In fact, I think the aperture blades have been completely removed at some point, so I think maybe they made the focus a bit loose when putting it back together, because the ring moves up and down a bit...

So, a few shots wide open at f/3.5!







100% crops:





So what exactly does hurt image quality?

[pcarfan]

Originally Posted by jsherman999

.


Got the Tammy back from Eric couple days ago - there's a lens group within the lens
that can't be removed or disassembled, it's manufactured and bolted together as
a unit in the factory, apparently (which is why Tamron judged it "not economically
feasible to repair.") Eric was able to clean the rest of the elements, however, and
it's about 80% cleaner than it was. (Eric didn't charge me, but I'll probably drop
him a couple buck if it tests out OK.)

Took it to the zoo today for a real test run (most are all ISO 800)



ISO 200, f/4, crop:


f/2.8, crop




ISO 200, f/6.7, tight crop

Jsherman,

These images are making me doubt my next purchase...I have it as the Sigma 70-200 after seeing the reviews and flicker images and the HSM of course, but Dang! these tammy images you are taking are spectacular, wow!

[jsherman999]

Originally Posted by pcarfan

Jsherman,

These images are making me doubt my next purchase...I have it as the Sigma 70-200 after seeing the reviews and flicker images and the HSM of course, but Dang! these tammy images you are taking are spectacular, wow!

Thanks! Those shots were taken after it had some water marks on two of the internal elements still. Dave (daacon) has that lens now.

It's a remarkable lens - there are some QC issues with both the Sigma 70-200 and Tamron 70-200 lenses, but they're not nearly as iffy as the DA* 16-50 was in it's bad old days - you're probably going to get a good one almost always.