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01-05-2016, 04:27 AM   #1
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Any Rikenon 55mm f1.2 owners?

Just wondering if there are any other Rikenon 55mm f1.2 owners out there. If so, please share your experience with this lens. Thank you.



01-05-2016, 04:52 AM   #2
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I have the P version (the Ricoh equivalent of the Pentax A mount). I must admit that apart from some experiments with shallow DOF and bokeh, I haven't used it much but the results are IMO not at all bad. I would put it on my single-in list except that as things currently stand I'm going on a trip in late February/early March and don't want to take it with me.

Build quality is nothing short of exquisite.
01-05-2016, 06:13 AM   #3
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I dont have exactly that one, but had used few of XR Rikenons(50/2, 50/1.7, 135/2.8) that I did cleaned/fixed and sold over. And all had amazing sharpness beating almost anything in the same specs when full opened,not much of flare resistant, surprisingly almost no CA. I love how contrast and vivid images from that lenses are. I preffer them over Super Tak's to be honest. Sadly most of the 50's are in plastic casings that like to get little wobbling over time, some parts are not screwed but glued inside.
01-05-2016, 08:34 AM   #4
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I believe it's the same as the Tomioka/Cosina/Revuenon 55mm 1.2 if I'm not mistaken. I believe there's a lens club that I've seen before dedicated to the variations.

01-05-2016, 09:57 AM   #5
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I had a Rikenon 50mm f1.4. It was not an easy lens to obtain (special order, long wait). The mechanical construction was stunning, one of the smoothest manual-focusing lenses I've ever handled. But the IQ was at best so-so - not on a par with my much older, M42 mount f1.4 Takumar.
01-05-2016, 10:03 AM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by WPRESTO Quote
not on a par with my much older, M42 mount f1.4 Takumar.
Once you have a really good lens of a certain focal length and aperture (and special type where applicable, e.g. fisheye or macro), it seems you are optically spoiled for everything else. The Takumars are very, very good; it's difficult to do better and all too easy to do worse. And while mechanical construction is a big part of what makes a good lens great, it ain't gonna rescue bad optics.
01-05-2016, 10:14 AM   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by pathdoc Quote
Once you have a really good lens of a certain focal length and aperture (and special type where applicable, e.g. fisheye or macro), it seems you are optically spoiled for everything else. The Takumars are very, very good; it's difficult to do better and all too easy to do worse. And while mechanical construction is a big part of what makes a good lens great, it ain't gonna rescue bad optics.
At the time I was using a Ricoh XR-M body (actually two of them) because they had a suite of features I wanted but could not get in a K-mount Pentax body. Consequently I went with Ricoh lenses, not Pentax. Those cameras were very good, BUT, fragile. Various things broke and eventually failed. I eventually got an LX and later various AF Pentax bodies (PZ1, ZX5n, *ist)

01-05-2016, 10:23 AM   #8
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QuoteOriginally posted by WPRESTO Quote
a Ricoh XR-M body (actually two of them) because they had a suite of features I wanted but could not get in a K-mount Pentax body.
I know this is going off topic, but I'd be interested to know what those were. I have accumulated quite a few Pentax K-mount bodies, all of which do things in a somewhat different way (except for the second Spotmatic, which came free with a lens I wanted and may yet go to charity with a lens I don't want).
01-05-2016, 11:31 AM   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by pathdoc Quote
I know this is going off topic, but I'd be interested to know what those were. I have accumulated quite a few Pentax K-mount bodies, all of which do things in a somewhat different way (except for the second Spotmatic, which came free with a lens I wanted and may yet go to charity with a lens I don't want).
1) fully automatic film loading; 2) motorized film advance; 3) spot, average and simple zone ("matrix") metering quickly selected via a sliding switch; 4) built-in intervalometer for automatic shooting of an entire roll with intershot delay adjustable from about one second to a several hours. 5) electronic rather than mechanical cable release (although I have come to wish all modern DSLR's had a steel shutter release button threaded for mechanical cable releases) 6) a very clever, tiny, convenient clip-on TTL flash. 7) full information in the viewfinder (meter pattern, f-stop, shutter speed, exposure adjust, flash ready, flash exposure confirmation).
No Pentax body at that time offered these features. To get motorized film advance, you almost always needed a separately purchased winder. I had the winder for my LX, but when attached, it made the camera body clumsy in the hands, less stable on a tripod and It was nothing like as convenient or quick as the built-in film advance of the XR-M. And when did Pentax introduce a body with multiple metering patterns? The X synch on the LX was dismally slow (as I remember, on the XR-M it was 1/125, a full stop faster).
01-05-2016, 12:08 PM   #10
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That's quite the feature set. #6 and #7 would be nice as additions to my P30T (along with a shutter priority mode), but the rest I wouldn't use and can do without on a film camera. Even when I had a motor-drive AF film SLR, I don't think I ever wanted rapid advance for anything I did, and quite frankly I could easily have done without it. In fact, I found I could do without so much on a motor drive AF film SLR that I dumped it not long after buying a second-hand P50 (I wanted a K1000, but they didn't have one and the next simplest thing they had, a P3, turned out to be faulty and I had to return it the next day).
01-05-2016, 12:34 PM   #11
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I used the intervalometer on the Ricoh in a "studio" set-up on a monarch chrysalis that I wanted to photograph opening and emerging. I wanted the auto winder because when doing macro in the field @ 1/3X or higher I found that using the lever advance almost always slightly threw off the framing no matter how carefully I advanced. no matter how heavy the tripod and ball head. The spot metering was also useful for macro where the background was commonly much darker than the subject, or was made darker by casting a shadow on it, or the subject was illuminated by flash or with a reflector. The wired cable release was nice, until it failed in both bodies. The cables themselves still work ( I have a couple and can use them on any Pentax DSLR provided I shut off the AF). Another thing I did not mention about the XRM: There was available (I still own and it works perfectly) a wireless remote system powered by button cells. The receiver and transmitter are each about one-inch square and 1/4 inch thick - tiny, smaller than any modern versions I've seen - and it has a range of over 100'. It's usable on any Pentax DSLR with AF off. With my current Pentax DSLR's I have used medium-speed motorized shooting especially on wildlife such as a whale surfacing then sounding (hard to predict when the tail lift is "best"). Most effectively I used HS shooting to capture a bluebird in flight bringing food to it's offspring. Set up camera (K3) & tele lens on a tripod aimed across the observed flight path, prefocused the lens (bird moves much too fast for AF), manually determine exposure (high ISO for high shutter speed), stand back with remote trigger and set off HS shooting as bird approached the zone covered by the lens. Sometimes only the head, sometimes only the tail, or the belly, or the back, but about one shot in six or eight was spot-on. Could never have made those captures without HS auto shooting.

---------- Post added 01-05-16 at 02:40 PM ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by dcshooter Quote
Assuming one of the later ones? The early auto Rikenon 55mm 1.4s were one of the Tomioka Planar clones and could easily go toe to toe with the Super Tak 1.4 in just about everything but size.
That I could not tell you. The lens is long gone. I persistently mounted it and tried it - - it persistently gave images that had barely the IQ of normal-range zooms I was using.

Last edited by WPRESTO; 01-05-2016 at 12:42 PM.
01-05-2016, 01:21 PM   #12
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QuoteOriginally posted by WPRESTO Quote
The receiver and transmitter are each about one-inch square and 1/4 inch thick - tiny, smaller than any modern versions I've seen - and it has a range of over 100'. It's usable on any Pentax DSLR with AF off.
Wow. So the seeds of cross-compatibility and Ricoh-Pentax fusion were planted even back then...

I certainly don't doubt your need for the feature set as it existed - just that it's not a part of my needs.
01-05-2016, 02:06 PM   #13
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QuoteOriginally posted by pathdoc Quote
Wow. So the seeds of cross-compatibility and Ricoh-Pentax fusion were planted even back then...

I certainly don't doubt your need for the feature set as it existed - just that it's not a part of my needs.
Truly one man's meat is another man's tofu, or something like that. Wildlife & field macro photography is not architectural photography is not studio portraiture is not product nor scenic nor family holiday nor indoor sports, nor candid street etc... A field view camera with B&W would be fine for architecture, but it wouldn't suit me hiking a trail in Oregon looking for some unusual insect. A 35mm manual-focus rangefinder with f1.4 35mm lens might be fine for candid street shots, but would hardly help me capture a sandpiper scurrying along a Florida beach.

FYI:

Last edited by WPRESTO; 01-29-2016 at 12:32 PM.
01-06-2016, 01:40 AM   #14
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QuoteOriginally posted by pathdoc Quote
Build quality is nothing short of exquisite.
I was looking on the used market and was surprised to see some of the Tomioka/Cosina/Revuenon 55mm 1.2 lenses selling for around $1k. They must be exquisite for that money.
01-06-2016, 02:28 AM - 1 Like   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by RR84 Quote
I was looking on the used market and was surprised to see some of the Tomioka/Cosina/Revuenon 55mm 1.2 lenses selling for around $1k. They must be exquisite for that money.
Build Quality is very good, but the Aperture Numbers are "printed" rather than "stamped" onto the aperture ring, so on a well used copy they will wear out in time.

Optically it is in the same league as the Pentax (IMO) - I'm sure many will disagree, but for the few months I owned one I was never disappointed when comparing it to my Pentax A50/1.2. My copy was virtually as new and I eventually sold it purely on the lack of an 'A' setting.

As for pricing, well I wouldn't value it any higher than the Pentax 50/1.2's





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