Veteran Member Registered: January, 2013 Location: Kansas City, KS Posts: 1,612
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| | Review Date: May 2, 2015 | Recommended | Price: $70.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Wide, sharp, close MFD | | Cons: | Flares easily, needs a hood | |
I used this lens all month for Single in April 2015. I bought it on Ebay for around $70US in February 2015. There appears to be some cleaning marks on an inside element, but they do not seem to effect the image quality.
The lens has no surprises as an M42 mount creature. Solid, metal, smooth, well-built. All rings are responsive: the M/A ring and aperture ring click solidly, and the focusing ring is smooooth and rotates about 225 degrees from MFD to infinity.
The lens is super sharp! I liked f/8 best. There was a little chromatic aberration, but easily corrected in Lightroom. Wide open, the bokeh was really nice, but the "glow" on the in-focus objects was significant. This lens "swirls" the bokeh blobs, like folks seem to appreciate from the Helios lenses.
Image quality is fantastic. Clear, true colors and rich details. Nothing to want in regard to quality rendering.
There is a noticeable amount of distortion, but it is something that can be corrected, if you choose to do so. I didn't think it was "bad" enough to fix in most of my images.
This lens loooves to flare. Beautiful rainbow hexagons! If you're into flare, look no further. :-) It also will lose contrast in direct light and would do best with a hood. I had a hood that fit the lens' filter ring, but it was too long and cause vignetting. Even without a hood, there was a small amount of vignetting on APS-C, but I haven't got any film shots with this lens developed yet to say how it looks on full-frame.
The focal length on APS-C is amazing, feels slightly wider than my natural field of vision, which is handy in tight spots, or when I want to fit in a big piece of architecture.
Click here to see all of the images I've made with this lens: Promaster 24/2.8 Album | |
