Originally posted by Lowell Goudge I don;t disagree, but I felt I should caution anyone that while I like the vivitar and find it fun to use, especially as a casual walk around to isolate people, the lens seems to have a love it or hate it response.
I was speaking more in general than in terms of the Vivitar (and others) 85mm. I see a lot of lens snobbery from people who spend more time taking pictures of charts and newspaper pages, if they even own the lens, than going out and taking pictures. Of course, that snobbery exists everywhere.
Perhaps it's snobbery on my part but I'm a put up or shut up type of person. That is, if you, for instance, had said "Had the lens, didn't like it because....", I can respect that. May not agree, but at least you've given something of personal experience to back your statement.
Quote:
For me, I bought it because I gave up waiting for the chance to get anSMC 85 F1.8.
about 10 months after I bought it I tripped over a Super Tak 85mm F1.9 at a very good price so I got that also, as the start of a decision to build an M42 kit to compliment my K mount kit
I really couldn't say why I bought mine other than it's an f1.4. I certainly didn't need it, don't use it very much, and already had the FL very well covered or at least close enough. I Can say that I chose the Vivitar badged one over the others because at the time the Vivitar is the only one I could verify was an A type lens. I can quite happily live without autofocus, I've grown to like auto exposure. Did I pay too much for the Vivitar brand name? Who knows, who cares. That little red pinstripe sure is pretty
.
I have a couple very nice Super Tak lenses and unless I found a Super Tak 85 dirt dirt cheap, I'm letting the next guy get them. I just can't get use to using the screw mount. I keep the ones I have because I have a Spotmatic F that one of these days. I'm going to go out and take some slides.