Site Supporter Registered: November, 2012 Location: North Wales Posts: 2,869 | | Review Date: March 3, 2015 | Recommended | Price: $50.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | mechanics, construction, 15 blade iris, t-mount | | Cons: | sample variation, the usual looong close focus distance. | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 7
Bokeh: 8
Handling: 9
Value: 8
Camera Used: K5, NX20
| |
My first one is the one in pic 2 above, prinzgalaxy nameplate. Obviously another tokina the features are quite distinctive. I had quite high hopes for this. Hypothesis: these early 400mm 6.3's were made in the days when they were relatively premium items, the prosumer lenses of the moment. With a bit of luck the quality will reflect that.
Mechanically and construction wise the lens didn't disappoint, a classic vintage lens. Optically it proved, however to be probably the worst vintage 400mm I have tried out. Soft at f6.3, barely Ok -ish when stopped down. I desultorily persevered trying to get better pics out of it for a while then sold it on.
Hypothesis 2: with improved coatings and manufacturing techniques the later lenses may be better...? I suspect actually this is merely illustrating the variability of these lenses. And it's kid brother a Palinar branded 300mm f5.5 proved to be good.
Oct 2015
My second example had a Hanimex nameplate and was much better, indeed one of the better 400mm f6.3's I have had. It had the edge, for example, on a chrome eared soligor (9xxxxx serial) I compared it to. These test crops illustrate its performance (samsung NX20):
Good sharpness at f6.3, with discernable improvement at f8. Couple more sample pics:
Crop of visitors on the castle:
I can consider the first example to be a duff one. Ratings reflect the performance of the second example.
| |
New Member Registered: February, 2012 Posts: 17
1 user found this helpful
| | Review Date: April 23, 2013 | Recommended | Price: $20.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Good colour, sharp, works well with teleconverters, integrated tripod mount | | Cons: | No built-in lens hood; rather unwieldy length | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 8
Bokeh: 9
Handling: 8
Value: 9
| |
I bought this with the aperture mechanism seized up (a previous owner had taken it to pieces and greased it!) to use with an infra-red night-vision scope. It was useless for this purpose; the visual field was too dark, and the depth of field was too shallow.
But I put it on my camera, and was pleasantly surprised.
So I took it all to bits, cleaned off the fungus, which had fortunately not etched the glass, discarded one of the 16 aperture blades which had lost one of its copper rivets, restored infinity focus and then put threadlock on the chewed up screws as I reassembled it.
With the screw-in lens hood from the Photosniper, it is brilliant. It is longer than indicated (I measure 425 mm rather than 400 mm) and it's better than my two newer Tokina 400 f5.6 IF lenses (which admittedly are fungus-affected), and better than my wider telephotos when they are fitted with teleconverters.
At f 6.3 the out of focus areas have lots of CA, but it is actually a feature rather than a problem. The CA is gone at f 8.
It works well with Teleconverters, both 2x and 3x.
The bokeh is brilliant.
The preset mechanism means that aperture can be silently and infinitely adjusted, which is useful when using the Pentax K-x in Video mode.
| |
;)
;)
;)
