[Skodadriver]

I have 3 Cosina cameras, all with Cosinon 50mm K mount lenses that I wanted to try on my Pentax digital SLRs.
The history of Cosina seems to encompass some highs and lows with their lens efforts, including top name brands as well as the "cheap" end.
The lenses are;
MC COSINON-2 50mm F:1.7
COSINON-S 50mm F:2 (not multicoated?)
COSINON AUTO SQ 50mm F:2 (not multicoated?)


2 of the 3 lenses had oil on the blades and would not stop down but exercising the elbow linkage has freed them up...for a while anyway.


None of these lenses seem to be in the same league as the Pentax-M 50mm F:1.7(or the Rikenon F:2) for image quality.
Have these lenses just been made for the cheap end of the market?


Have Cosina made any Cosinon branded 50mm k mount primes that do compare?


The Cosinon-T 135mm F:3.5 seems to be quite competitive with other 135mm lenses for a cheap lens.


I should point out that all 3 cameras work (after cleaning out the battery compartment on 1 of them) and seem quite reasonable in comparison to other brands, unlike the 2 ME Supers that I have been unable to get to drop down their mirrors.


One more question;
do the suffix on the lens mean....W for wide, S for standard, Z for zoom and T for telephoto?

[edmundrt]

The 135mm is definitely the best of the primes, and some of the zooms are good - I've got a 28-70 somewhere that always surprises me when I get it out. The letter suffixes are indeed wide, standard, zoom and tele. Most of them were for the cheap end of the market and many were made for rebranding - a huge amount of Vivitar stuff, for example, is Cosina made. The other stand out lens for me is the Cosinon-W 24mm f2.8, which is a very good wide angle and was available in KA mount.

As for the cameras, they're pretty standard K-mount fare. The one that stands out for me is the CT1 Super, which is a fully manual body but with shutter speeds up to 1/2000s. It's incredibly light and small and you can buy one for less than your lunch.

Of course, these days Cosina are mostly producing their much more posh Voigtlander and Zeiss stuff.