Pentaxian Registered: December, 2016 Location: London Posts: 1,079 | | Review Date: April 14, 2023 | Recommended | Price: None indicated
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Very sharp, extremely solid construction | | Cons: | VERY heavy | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 9
Bokeh: 9
Handling: 7
Value: 9
Camera Used: Canon Eos 40D
Focusing: 8
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I have the Vivitar version of this lens, a VERY solidly built lens that is still in remarkably good condition despite its age. Focusing is very smooth and precise, but the precision comes at the cost of needing a lot of turning to get in focus sometimes, it rotates through nearly 360 degrees. This may be why there are sockets for a focusing lever, it may make things faster if you're focusing in a hurry. Because of its weight you definitely need a heavy-duty tripod, hand-holding it really doesn't work well.
Because I live in the middle of London and weather is currently dreadful I haven't had much opportunity to play with it yet, but this uncropped picture of the Moon (Canon Eos 40D, 1/1000th f16 ISO 800) shows what it's capable of.
The full-sized image and some pictures of the lens are in this album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/150868539@N02/albums/72177720306419568
I hope to add more eventually.
My overall impression is a very good lens but probably not the easiest to use, its weight and length can be problematic, and looking like the barrel of a gun may not be a great idea in some situations.
One small correction - the rear filter receptacle takes 37.5mm glass filter discs without mounts, and should have a threaded retaining ring to hold them in place. If a mounted filter is screwed in it may not be possible to focus to infinity since it will get in the way of the T-mount. If you prefer 88mm filters your best bet is probably Russian sources, they were made for some of the bigger Kiev 80 lenses, but they aren't cheap. 88mm hoods appear to be completely unobtainable, I used a flour canister with the bottom cut off and painted matt black with felt pads to hold it in place.
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