Astronar 400/7.5 Exakta - Made in Encino, California, USA

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

I picked this up because I have heard of it before -

Here is a bit on the web - http://www.exakta.org/ebayb4.html

This is a very unusual lens. US-made SLR lenses are rare to begin with, and this one is even stranger.

It was made around 1958 in Encino, which is a not-very-fashionable suburb of Los Angeles, by Encino Engineering, which was possibly operated out of someones garage.

Los Angeles has some interesting ties to the lens and photographic industries. Probably because of Hollywood, there were some lens and camera manufacturers there, like Century Optics. There are also a lot of camera and lens technicians. I can only speculate that someone with some knowledge of lenses, but limited resources, tried to fill a market need.

Back in 1958 if you wanted a 300mm+ lens for your SLR (a natural application for SLR's), your options were limited to lenses that were large, heavy, expensive, and German. The Japanese had not yet flooded the market with light and cheap 400mm's. Or you could make a lens, the photo magazines had features on making tele lenses out of telescopes and miscellaneous optics. So there was an unmet need.

So what about this lens ? Well, it is very light, being mostly a thin aluminum tube with baffles. It must have been cheap, because it lacks a diaphragm (like modern mirror lenses, its a fixed aperture, f/7.5) and the focusing mechanism isn't even a helical, its a simple screw. Its got two elements in front and what looks like an optical flat by the lens mount, probably to keep dust out. It doesn't even have a focusing ring, you turn the entire lens barrel to focus. Minimum focus seems to be about 30 ft/10m, which is typical for the time. It has no tripod mount. Its almost the absolute minimum needed to make a 400mm SLR lens. I would even say its primitive, one step up from home-made. It apparently came in Exakta and M42 mount, mine is an Exakta.

So whats it like ? It is not an easy lens to use. The small aperture makes it difficult to focus precisely and my focus confirm works only occasionally, and only in bright light. I was very bothered by the long minimum focus, so I put it on an extension tube for some shots. It seems to be quite sharp in the center, but the image degrades somewhat towards the edges, with very noticable fringes, and generally lower contrast than I would like. On the whole I would rank it as a curiosity rather than a user. If I had to pack a long lens on a long walking trip I may change my mind, as it is extremely light.

The bird -

crop -