Originally posted by Cardinal15 It seems everything is subjective on this subject. Why ask us if you should keep these lenses or if they're any good? In my experience every manufacturer seem to have produced some gems and some dogs, and with the plethora of rebadging in the 60's,70. and 80's it's often difficult to track who made what lens. In an era of digital imaging its easy to test lenses. Clean them and put them on a camera and shoot with them! (assuming that the ME you bought is not your only camera) If you like the pictures or at least find them not technically flawed then keep them.You will find no end of threads extolling the virtues of a particular manufacturer or reseller you will find an equal number of threads railing against them, in the end only by shooting them and seeing if they can produce the kind of images you want will you know. I own many lenses in the pentax mounts some are "name" brands some are obscure and on more than one occasion I have been pleasantly surprised by shots I've gotten from these lenses. Don't get hung up on what they are, get hung up on what they do.It's one thing to do research if you're thinking about buying a lens but if you already have them in your hot little hands trust your own judgement after you use them...
It's not so much whether I should keep them but as I am starting out again there will be many variables so just wanted a heads up about what to expect, but as you suggest it doesnt seem as simple as that anyway.
Are Pentax brand pretty much always OK ? I heard sometimes they use other manufacturers designs with their own glass but not a straight rebadge and only decent manufacturers.
---------- Post added 11-02-17 at 15:43 ----------
Originally posted by dcshooter Less a reseller than a design house that farmed out manufacturing to various (typically Japanese) contractors.
Many Vivitar lenses are actually quite high in quality, on par with their OEM peers.
Miranda was originally an OEM that made high-quality SLRs with their own mount and sold overseas through a licensing agreement with Soligor. Later, the brand was revived for downmarket Cosina-made lenses.
Just to illustrate that it's difficult to associate various "generic" manufacturers with quality or lack thereof, Cosina, in addition to having made many crappy generic lenses, is the current manufacturer of Zeiss and Voigtlander lenses in Japan now.
The 50mm that came with my Cosina CT-1a always seemed pretty good actually, I kept it for my P30n, although it was possible that on my budget I just didnt have anything decent to compare it to.
I remember buying the cheapest 80-200mm there was, it began with H, Hanimex proabably ? After a while it went wrong anyway, the diaphragm locked up if I remember correctly.