New Member Registered: June, 2019 Posts: 3 | | Review Date: June 14, 2020 | Recommended | Price: $60.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Tack sharp, macro, compact | | Cons: | Plasticy construction, but doesn't feel cheap. | | Sharpness: 10
Aberrations: 8
Bokeh: 8
Handling: 9
Value: 10
Camera Used: Sony A7R
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I bought this lens at the suggestion of some forum memebers. Not being amazed at results from vintage zoom lenses in the past, I decided to give it a shot anyways as I needed a good general purpose lens. Well its no exageration when I say that it has now replaced a few of my prime lenses in that focal range due to how sharp it is. F3.5 is decent enough, but for F5.6-F11 it is incredibly sharp across the whole focal range, and atleast my copy is just as sharp on the edges and corners. Haven't tested the macro function much yet, but I will update when I do. I did a 100% crop test to show that this lens is out-resolving a 36MP full frame sensor of my Sony A7R.
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New Member Registered: March, 2019 Posts: 2 | | Review Date: October 24, 2019 | Recommended | Price: $35.00
| Rating: 10 |
| Pros: | sharpness, easy of use, handy macro function, colours | | Cons: | none | | Sharpness: 10
Aberrations: 10
Bokeh: 9
Handling: 10
Value: 10
Camera Used: Sony a6000 and Minolta XG1
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This is a spectacularly good lens. In my humble opinion it beats the highly regarded Pentax m 35-70mm zoom in every conceivable way. It is lighter, easier to focus, has a macro function, a constant fastest aperture and produces beautiful images. I have both lenses but if I reach for a zoom lens I reach for this one 95% of the time.
I bought my lens for a steal; I know prices are creeping up on Ebay. When I got it home I found the start of very light fungus on the front element. This does not affect picture quality in any way.
If you find one, snap it up. You are getting a truly great zoom lens. It is true what people say; it is just like a stack of primes.
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Forum Member Registered: November, 2016 Posts: 65 | | Review Date: September 22, 2019 | Recommended | Price: $30.00
| Rating: 10 |
| Pros: | Very sharp from wide open, colour rendition, solid build quality. | | Cons: | Quite heavy for size, slightly fiddly to get into macro. | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 9
Bokeh: 8
Handling: 7
Value: 10
Camera Used: Fuji X-A1
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I've read many reviews of old MF zoom lenses and the general consensus seems to be that old MF zooms are mostly poor by today's standards but with a few exceptions.
I trawled the reviews and this was one that bubbled to the surface as one of those rare examples of an old zoom lens that is regarded as pretty damn good,
even by modern standards with the only main deficits being that everything is manual.
I saw spectacular results and read that the optics were the same as used by Leica in their Vario Elmar-R 35-70 F3.5
and that inevitably led me to E-Bay to see what was on offer.
Ever the skeptic, I skirted around the 'good' ones and found one that was unusually cheap and advertised as "haze, fungus and stuck on UV filter".
It was only £20 (25 USD) so I bought it, examined it then piled into it gung ho.
To cut a long story short, I managed to fix everything and OMG is this lens good!
They weren't kidding when they said the optical quality of this zoom lens is comparable to decent primes.
There are varients and the one to go for (AFAIU) is the one I got which has a switchable macro function,
here in the UK on E-Bay it goes for about £50 ($60 USD) minimum for a working example with prices maxing out to over £100 ($125 USD) for really good ones.
Pic 1 was shot at F8, the following two were wide open at F3.5. Sorry about the scaling differences, I'm not good with this stuff.
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