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Flektogon 2.8/20 on 5D
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 8:37 am    Post subject: Flektogon 2.8/20 on 5D Reply with quote

I'd never really got to test my 20 mm Flektogons, perhaps because I'm more at home with rather longer lenses even on a crop body. Now I decided to start with the 2.8, especially fully open in order to see whether there is any sense in getting the 2.8 instead of the cheaper 4.0, which many people consider to be the better one of the 20 mm Fleks. I started taking photos, but soon realized that I couldn't quite reach infinity focus at f/2.8, the adapter being maybe 0.05 - 0.1 mm too thick. Later I checked my other M42 adapters and found out that one of them was exactly the same and the other one was too thin allowing me to focus past infinity, which is better but not ideal as UWA lenses are perhaps the most difficult MF lenses to focus exactly - for pixel peeping one cannot count on the deep DOF to take care of any focusing errors.
Anyway, there are good news and bad news. Lets take the bad ones first. At f/2.8 the photos are soft with lowish contrast and vignetting, and I wouldn't print them even at 12" x 18". The good news is that with judicious use of local contrast enhancement and sharpening the photos might be good enough for reasonable quality 8" x 12" prints.

Here are four interior shots from the Helsinki Cathedral at f/2.8, after PP:









Then two shots at f/11. I'm no great fan of indiscriminate sharpening, but sometimes sharpening can enhance a photo, make it in a way more graphical like the foreground pavement in the first photo and the clouds in the second one:





An UWA lens is almost worse than a fish-eye, often rectangular UWA photos exaggerate things in a very unnatural way, like the people at the lower edge of the previous photo get elongated and the round ceiling decorations which get to resemble eggs in the next photo taken at the Helsinki Railway Station restaurant, f/2.8:



The 2.8/20 Flek is smaller and mechanically smoother working than the 4/20 (my 4/20 feels a wee bit loose). The results at f/2.8 aren't spectacular, but the photos are quite usable and the one extra stop of speed can be valuable even on a 5D, especially under conditions where tripods aren't allowed. I'll have to repeat the test with the thinner adapter to see how much difference more exact focusing can make. After that I'll proceed to test the 4/20.

Veijo


PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 9:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have some chance to get this lens ( 3 times Smile ). But the quality of sample shots never win me Sad . Ok, I know the 20mm is wide, and this lens was legendary in film camera's.
.


PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 9:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi!

The superwide effect is striking, Veijo.

I was offered a Flek 4/20 for € 125,- yesterday. Then I saw that the lens had a scratch right in the middle of the front element. Well...

(I did not want to pay this money anyway Wink)


Last edited by LucisPictor on Sun Jul 01, 2007 1:14 pm; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 10:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nice results Veijo. I used to have a 2.8/20 last year. It was focusing past infinity on all cameras (including M42 prakticas) and the IQ at f/2.8 was nothing short of awful. In fact, there was coma in the corners, and the image was overall very soft. Stopping down the quality in the centre got better, but I could not get decent corners until f/8. So in the end, I decided to sell it, because it costed me a lot of money.
Your copy seems better than mine. I heard of people with very good copies of this lens. But they seem to be the minority. Many seem to get copies like the one that I had. It's really unfortunate. I think the reason is because the 2.8/20 was made in the period where apparently the quality control at Carl Zeiss Jena was at his lowest. In fact, I am not alone in often finding quality control poorer in newer Jena lenses of the 70s and 80s than it was in the 50s and early 60s.


PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 1:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
In fact, I am not alone in often finding quality control poorer in newer Jena lenses of the 70s and 80s than it was in the 50s and early 60s.


I have two Flek 4/20s in Exakta mount - one with the dimpled plastic focus ring and the other with the zebra focus ring. I also have a Flek 4/25 in Exakta mount and all of these lenses seem of a better mechanical quality than either of my two zebra M42 Flek 4/20s. The aperture ring operation seems smoother and more positive for example.

The serial no. of one of the Exakta mount zebra 20s is fairly close to one of the M42s but funnily enough it's the Exakta copy that "feels" better.