Senior Member Registered: January, 2013 Posts: 194 | | Review Date: July 8, 2014 | Recommended | Price: $30.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | small, sharp from wide open, 49mm filter thread | | Cons: | handling | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 9
Bokeh: 8
Handling: 7
Value: 9
Camera Used: K-30
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In theory, the 35mm focal length on the digital bodies with 1.5 crop factor should be the 50mm of the full frame. However, for some reason the 35'ies seem to be a quite forgotten focal length. I used to have the plastic fantastic DA35, which didn't impress me much. I thought the problem being the boring focal length and moved on. Then, I happened to get this Vivitar 35mm and decided to give it a proper test drive.
I've been using this lens for half a month for the "Single in July" challenge. See my example pics there. So far the experience has been positive: I grabbed the lens in a deal of 40€ for this Vivitar and a 135mm Vivitar with sticky iris blades. In general, my strategy in lens acquisition is to favor quality over price; when a copy became available and there were no reviews for this lens here, I decided to find out what can this lens do.
In my copy, the serial number starts with the number 9. Based on the Vivitar serial numbers database, this lens was manufactured by Cosina. Actually, based on the reviews on Cosina 35mm f2.8 W MC, I have strong beliefs that these two are actually the same lens. Based on this text, the image quality is very comparable to the Pentax K 35mm f3.5.
The image quality seems to be OK - there is the feeling of an old, manual lens, which is probably why you'd be using a lens like this. The lens uses the 49mm filter thread, which is shared with quite a many of Pentax's own manual lenses.
Bokeh is OK, not spectacular but not ugly.
Focusing ring turns the other way than in Pentax lenses. For me this 'wrong way' seems to actually be 'the correct' way - dunno why. The focusing throw is short, which means that there's not so much room for fine tuning. Minimum printed focusing distance is 40cm (~1 ft).
In my K-30, there is a problem with the camera body not detecting a lens being present with this lens. As stated in the Cosina review, the bayonet of the lens is not conductive, which misleads the camera body. Unlike this page states, the bayonet in my copy is made of metal (not plastic), but it's black anodized. As a consequence, in M-mode when I press the green button to meter the scene, the camera always sets shutter speed to 1/125, regardless of the light available. So it's 1/125 if I have the lens cap on or if I'm pointing the camera towards the sun. The exif data of the pictures reads as "M-42 or no lens" as the lens used. Possible remedies include sanding the lens bayonet, or just using the live view in newer cameras.
For me, the solution is to use the live view.
In conclusion: for 1/5th of the Pentax K 35mm price, you can obtain an lens that gives you very comparable results. It's drawbacks are in the handling section, where it lacks the straightforwardness of Pentax's own manual M- and K-series lenses.
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