Fixing "unsharp on the left" Zenitar-16

aoleg · Joined: 22 Feb 2008 Posts: 1389 Location: Berlin, DE

I had what I thought was a bad copy of Zenitar-16 in Canon EOS mount (native mount; it was sold this way). I bought it brand new. From day one, it was fuzzy on the left side. Today, I decided to try and fix it.

First, I thought there was a problem with de-centering. However, this was not the case. The problem was that damn aftermarket EOS mount the seller screwed on the lens in a garage! Long story short, I had to put a washer of about 0.7mm between the lens itself and the right side of the mount. This made the field flat, and finally I got a lens that is extremely sharp across the frame. Hell, it's even sharp in the corners by f/8 - a property I have yet to see in any other wide-angle, famos Nikkors included! (Of course, I understand that making a sharp uncorrected lens is easier than producing a sharp rectlinear WA).