Forgot Password
Pentax Camera Forums Home
 
Log in or register to remove ads.

Third-Party Pentax Lenses - Reviews and Database » Ricoh Lenses » Prime Lenses
Rikoh Rikenon P 50mm  F1.7 Review RSS Feed

Rikoh Rikenon P 50mm F1.7

Sharpness 
 9.5
Aberrations 
 8.3
Bokeh 
 8.9
Handling 
 9.1
Value 
 9.9
Reviews Views Date of last review
19 92,994 Wed January 3, 2024
spacer
Recommended By Average Price Average User Rating
95% of reviewers $25.27 8.95
Rikoh Rikenon P 50mm  F1.7

Rikoh Rikenon P 50mm  F1.7
supersize
Rikoh Rikenon P 50mm  F1.7
supersize
Rikoh Rikenon P 50mm  F1.7
supersize

Description:
Ricoh K-mount manual focus, manual aperture standard lens.
Price History:



Add Review of Rikoh Rikenon P 50mm  F1.7
Author:
Sort Reviews by: Date | Author | Rating | Recommendation | Likes (Descending) Showing Reviews 1-15 of 19
New Member

Registered: August, 2017
Location: Ronneburg
Posts: 1
Review Date: January 3, 2024 Recommended | Price: $30.00 | Rating: 10 

 
Pros: very sharp also at full open, very good optics
Cons: plastic housing, little CA's at digital
Sharpness: 10    Aberrations: 9    Bokeh: 10    Handling: 10    Value: 10    Camera Used: Pentax K-3/K30/Z-1/Ricoh XR-P   

Pros:
Very good value for Money, available today at an affordable price
Image quality on film is excellent also on digital
Manual focusing action is very good

Cons:

Plastic housing
   
Site Supporter

Registered: February, 2022
Posts: 14
Review Date: January 17, 2023 Recommended | Price: $30.00 | Rating: 9 

 
Pros: Rendering, sharpness, muted colours, small
Cons: A bit plasticky, a little prone to CA
Sharpness: 8    Aberrations: 6    Bokeh: 10    Handling: 9    Value: 10    Camera Used: K-1 ii, LX   

A lovely lens. I own this alongside the Pentax-M 50mm f1.4 and Fujinon 50mm f1.4 (M42), which you'd think might make this plasticky Ricoh redundant, but the three lenses perform really quite differently from one another. What I love about the Ricoh (beyond its size and light weight) are its colours and the quality of its rendering - it's not the sharpest or highest-resolution 50mm you'll find (though it's absolutely sharp enough), but the pictures this lens takes have a lovely, difficult-to-quantify quality to them: there's a calm, muted warmth to them and a slight greenish tint that oozes mood and atmosphere. I love it.


Otherwise, sharpness is great, bokeh is lovely, and contrast is subdued and subtle, suiting my tastes (I find most modern lenses too contrasty). It's also a bargain, though it's getting harder to find these for the absurdly low prices they used to go for. Your best bet is to look for an old unpopular Ricoh camera body with one of these attached to it. I was impatient and so paid $30 for mine, which is of course still absurdly little for a lens of this calibre.


   
New Member

Registered: April, 2019
Posts: 6
Review Date: April 6, 2019 Recommended | Price: $11.00 | Rating: 9 

 
Pros: Sharpness, bokeh, price, availability
Cons: None that I can think off
Sharpness: 9    Aberrations: 8    Bokeh: 8    Handling: 9    Value: 9    Camera Used: Sony E-Mount   

I have this lens since only a few days now and its quality totally took me by surprise. In fact it is my least expensive buy concerning optics but it rivals many expensive lenses easily. The first surprise was its sharpness wide open as this particular copy is as sharp as most other lenses stopped down. Secondly despite its age and el cheapo status its remarkably CA-resistent as even photographing a burning candle with it didnt gave me any funny fringing. And because of these two characteristics it really shines as a low light lens as it stays sharp and contrasty despite any light source.

I also have the Super Takumar 55mm but this lens totally blows it away, as I'm sure it does most other manual 50's.
   
Junior Member

Registered: June, 2018
Posts: 42
Review Date: August 13, 2018 Recommended | Price: $10.00 | Rating: 9 

 
Pros: inexpensive,sharp,nice bokeh
Cons: I can't critisize itčs always on my camera
Sharpness: 10    Aberrations: 8    Bokeh: 10    Handling: 10    Value: 10    Camera Used: Q,K50,k2S   

My go to lens, I actually have 2. 2nd only to my 100mm Macro.
   
New Member

Registered: February, 2016
Posts: 3
Review Date: February 22, 2016 Recommended | Price: $55.00 | Rating: 9 

 
Pros: Resolution, contrast, colours from 2.8. Weight and size
Cons: Minimum focussing distance, wide open contrast, no half- steps aperture
Sharpness: 10    Aberrations: 8    Bokeh: 7    Handling: 8    Value: 10    Camera Used: Eos 450, k-5   

I love this lens, tried it against pentax m 50 1.4 and two copies of m50 1.7. Ricoh beat them clearly from 2.8 and more closed. Especially corners were incredibly better. From wide open up to f2, however, Pentaxes were more contrasty and sharp (although not in the corners). If you want similar performance in metal body and shorter mfd (45mm instead of 60mm), get the Xr versión (I bought one After trying the p 50), but you will lose lightweight and compactness.
Very hard to beat resolution wise.
Bokeh not nice, hexagonal straight blades.
   
Veteran Member

Registered: January, 2015
Location: Maryland
Posts: 1,677
Review Date: February 14, 2015 Recommended | Price: $20.00 | Rating: 10 

 
Pros: Inexpensive, Sharp, Manual Aperture, Compact
Cons: For what it is... Nothing
Sharpness: 10    Aberrations: 9    Bokeh: 9    Handling: 10    Value: 10    Camera Used: K-30   

I've had this lens for about a month now and I'm very happy with it... Best $20 spent so far.

I guess I should add my is NOT the P version...
There is no thread for my version of this lens... Therefore I'm placing my review here. If anyone feels as if my review should be placed elsewhere please let me know. Thanks!

I'll add some photos below.
First shot is of the lens itself so you can see what I mean by it not being the P version...
A shot of my oven with just the lens, then the following one of a penny with 49mm of extension tubes.
The last shot is of a paintbrush. My girlfriend is an artist and I grabbed her smallest gauge for an attempt at macro. The paint brush bristles are only 1mm in diameter.



   
Veteran Member

Registered: October, 2014
Location: Washington
Posts: 2,176
Review Date: January 6, 2015 Recommended | Price: $10.00 | Rating: 10 

 
Pros: Light, Cheap, Sharp
Cons: none
Sharpness: 10    Aberrations: 10    Bokeh: 9    Handling: 10    Value: 10    Camera Used: K5   

I did a comparison between f1.7 Ricoh, f2 Ricoh and Pentax FA1.4. My conclusion is...from f2.8 through f8 all three lenses are just about the same in resolution and contrast. The Pentax was sharper below f2.8, even f1.4 the Pentax was sharper than the Richohs at maximum aperture. All lenses were usable wide open but the Pentax being better.
   
New Member

Registered: December, 2014
Posts: 6
Review Date: December 18, 2014 Recommended | Price: $30.00 | Rating: 8 

 
Pros: Price, sharpness, works with low light
Cons: plastic feel, sometimes not good colors
Sharpness: 9    Aberrations: 8    Bokeh: 8    Handling: 7    Value: 10    Camera Used: K-200   

This is a good lense for this price. I use it mainly for indoor shooting, where i need lense which work well in low light. Also i use it mainly for portraits, because of digicrop... the 50mm become more like 75mm, which becomes useful only for very specific shooting. The colors dont seem to be vivid and colorful in some light conditions, and bokeh is sometimes weird, however when everything is set properly and you get interesting light, you get beautiful pictures. Some post editing helps a lot too. I recommend it. Very good manual lense.

here are some original pictures with NO editing. Taken with K-200 body.
PS : I dont use maximum aperture of 1,7. But i dont do that generaly on any lenses, so no exception here.



   
Forum Member

Registered: October, 2013
Posts: 91
Review Date: October 11, 2013 Not Recommended | Price: None indicated | Rating: 7 

 
Pros: good bokeh at 1.7, can be sharp if the focus is perfect
Cons: only 6 aperture blades, ugly hexagon bokeh stepped down, easily gets flare, no hood, bad contrast, colors are weak...

If you want any fast 50 that has nice bokeh wide open, you can buy the lens... but i think most fast 50s are maybe better easily gets lens flare, CA when shooting WO, could be sharper (but can be pretty sharp when focus is perfect, and when there is enough light...) Shot under the light of 3 lightbulbs 50-75cm from the wall-e, no other lighting in the room... EXIF has the ISO and shutter speed and aperture. The apertures are written in the picture descriptions... i would upload more pictures but my free limit is full sorry... 100% crop, cropped in-camera (RAW->JPG in camera). The original images 1150x1150 resized to 1024x1024 using Sinc (Lanczos3) algorithm. Here are the pictures: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/members/63791-cream/albums/7376-rikoh-rik...0mm-f1-7-test/
   
New Member

Registered: April, 2013
Posts: 2
Review Date: April 26, 2013 Recommended | Price: None indicated | Rating: 8 

 
Pros: Image quality, fast lens
Cons: Removing the "P" pin, 50mm length, finish flakes off

This is the lens that came with my Ricoh KR-5 Super II (35mm film) camera that I got back in high school. So I got it new and I've been it's only owner over its lifetime.

It's a great lens for full frame but I always find 50mm to be a little awkward on APS-C sensors.

I did pry open the metal plate and dig out the pin so that I didn't risk the lens getting stuck, and had no issues with that. But it was a bit of a hassle and I was scared I might break it.

I had a lot of the paint covering flaking off this lens for a long time, so the black flakes were a bit of a mess on my fingers and in my camera bag.

It's not an autofocus lens, so I wouldn't dream of using this lens with the default focusing screen on Pentax DSLRs. I always had the default one in my K100D Super, and took a lot of blurry photos. But now that I got a K-5 II s, I decided to get a KatzEye replacement focusing screen which makes manual focus a million times easier and takes me back to how it was when it was mounted on my Ricoh film SLR.

Mostly I use this lens because by now I'm just sentimentally attached to it.
   
Veteran Member

Registered: February, 2013
Location: Wisconsin
Posts: 391
Review Date: April 25, 2013 Recommended | Price: $27.00 | Rating: 10 

 
Pros: Sharp, light wieght, small, FAST
Cons: None

Got this lens off Ebay for $19.99 (plus shipping) and I got the Pentax-M 50 f/2 for $45.00 from Amazon, naturally I opted for this one as it was nearly half the cost. I am glad I got this lens. IQ is superior my Pentax DA 18-55, my Sigma 28-300, and I think sharpness rivals even that of my Sigma 21-35. Flaring is a bit of a problem, but with some PP that is fixable. Maybe people say that you need to remove the little brass pin to keep it from getting stuck on Pentax K mount cameras. I have not had this problem, but then again, I do have the one that was assembled in China. I love the full manual aspect of this lens. f/1.7-2.8 is very usable, but a bit soft for my taste, f/5.6-8 if flawless, boka is.. interesting. Very fast lens, can shoot low ISO and high shutter speed, I haven't gone above f/8 so, EXIF data isn't a big deal for me to determine.
   
Junior Member

Registered: September, 2012
Location: Ulm
Posts: 45
Review Date: September 29, 2012 Recommended | Price: $37.00 | Rating: 9 

 
Pros: sharp, lightweight yet solid, cheap
Cons: so-so bokeh, only usable as an M lens

This has got to be my all-around favorite lens on the K-x. It's fairly compact and lightweight (148g w/o caps according to my digital kitchen scale), pin sharp across the frame at f/8, has nice colors and contrast and tends to sell for a song whenever it comes up on the 'bay (well under 20 euros). I got mine from a dealer in pristine condition, hence the somewhat higher price. I don't regret one cent.

This lens was definitely built to a price. Build is plastic with a metal mount. Even the focus ring grip is molded in, which makes it less grippy but also much easier to clean when compared to rubber. Aperture and DOF markings appear to be engraved / molded in, while distance marks are not and may be prone to wear. The focus ring is nicely damped, no complaints about the aperture ring either, so it delivers where it counts.

You typically don't want to use this lens wide open (that's rather "dreamy" still), but f/2.8 is very usable already, and f/4 gets very sharp in the center, improving to pin sharp at f/5.6, which extends to the whole (APS-C) frame at f/8. An additional click between f/1.7 and f/2.8 would have been nice. You can get about f/22 in P mode though.

I got an XR Rikenon 50mm 1.4 to compare this one to, a fine lens in its own right and a better choice when you really need such a fast one, but it turned out that the lowly P 50mm 1.7 has the edge when it comes to edge/corner sharpness at f/8 (no pun intended). This is nothing unusual apparently and also to be observed with other manufacturers' lenses.

Compared to the Pentax-M 50mm 1.7 counterpart, performance is generally similar but with some differences in detail. Most notably, the Pentax is less susceptible to flare when shooting into a bright light source (no surprises there), though the Rikenon still does a decent job. In return, the Pentax is a lot softer towards the edges wide open, and still noticeably so at f/2.8, finally catching up at around the f/5.6 mark. They're quite similar in terms of fringing wide open, though I'd say the Pentax may be a hint more well-behaved and contrasty at this point (plus it has an intermediate step at f/2.3 or whatever that is, where fringing is just about gone).

I haven't noticed CA to be a significant problem. There is a bit at pixel level, but it almost isn't worth mentioning. (There is the usual dose of colored bokeh.) Likewise, ghosting and flares haven't been an issue in practice (I use a generic JJC lens hood). Some fringing is visible wide open, but generally gone by f/4.

Minimum focus distance is 0.6 m, which is only average in the days of kit lenses reaching less than half that. I tend to use a Raynox M-150 macro lens when needed, but have gotten nice shots of flowers and such even without it.

Bokeh is OK but isn't super soft either, and the edgy 6-blade aperture doesn't help.

I'm not sure whether I'll ever attempt a mod to make this lens usable as a Pentax A, even though that would be nice. Seems a bit tricky.

Overall:
Sharpness: 9
Handling: 8
Aberrations: 8-9
Bokeh: 6-7
Value: 10

My main problem with this lens is that I haven't found anything remotely comparable in a shorter (maybe 28mm) focal length yet! (50mm on crop is just too long for a lot of general purpose shooting.) I may have to fork out the big bucks there.
   
Pentaxian

Registered: May, 2012
Posts: 2,962
Review Date: July 18, 2012 Recommended | Price: None indicated | Rating: 9 

 
Pros: sharper than pentax A
Cons: none really

This lens is sharp and cheap. I did a side by side comparison and for a cheapy lens it did really really well. Definitely a strong buy for a backup lens---that may surprise you and become your primary lens.

For the price there is no reason at all to not have one of these.

I have the Ricoh P f1.4, this lens, and the Pentax A f1.7...I would rank them in that order. The only real upside to the Pentax A is that you can not only adjust the aperture from the camera, you can go in .1 increments. f1.7, 1.8, 1.9 etc....so in that regards its more flexible. And for the record I have two copies of the Pentax A f1.7 and this rokinon beats them both in sharpness. Not even a comparison.

I did a side by side home made test of the three 50's and given my test wasn't in ideal lab settings but this lens did remarkably well.

For portraits is great. Sharp from 2,8 on. A little soft at 1.7.

And for the record, I bought a bunch of metal screw on lens hoods... worth it for sure if you are shooting outdoors. Indoors--- fughetta bout it.
   
Senior Member

Registered: November, 2009
Location: manila
Posts: 152

1 user found this helpful
Review Date: May 26, 2012 Recommended | Price: $18.00 | Rating: 10 

 
Pros: Outstanding cheap sharp lens
Cons:

What can I say....2 members had retired their Pentax lens counterpart. This is my first f1.7 and I am amazed how sharp it is. Amazing depth of field. Get one when you happen to spot one.







With a Raynox 250:



Bokeh sample:

   
Senior Member

Registered: January, 2010
Location: Naples
Posts: 127

1 user found this helpful
Review Date: September 21, 2011 Recommended | Price: None indicated | Rating: 6 

 
Pros: Small, sharp enough, surely a cheap one.
Cons: Flares, only 6 aperture blades, not much vivid colors.

My father's got this lens. I've used it on my K10 for some months with an original pentax adapter ring. before I decided to get a Pentax-F 50 1.7.

It surely is nice to have one if you never had a 50mm and are willing to try one. Speaking about IQ, I think the worst thing is its poor resistance to flares.
Add Review of Rikoh Rikenon P 50mm  F1.7



All times are GMT -7. The time now is 09:56 PM. | See also: NikonForums.com, CanonForums.com part of our network of photo forums!
  • Red (Default)
  • Green
  • Gray
  • Dark
  • Dark Yellow
  • Dark Blue
  • Old Red
  • Old Green
  • Old Gray
  • Dial-Up Style
Hello! It's great to see you back on the forum! Have you considered joining the community?
register
Creating a FREE ACCOUNT takes under a minute, removes ads, and lets you post! [Dismiss]
Top