Three Early Super Zooms - Quite Pic Heavy

Nordentro · Expire: 2015-01-29

The Kobori really shines here IMO Wink

PhantomLord · Joined: 08 Apr 2013 Posts: 476 Location: Szczecin, Poland

OH now look what you have done Wink

, I just bought Vivitar 28-200 by Kobori.
Thank you for nice comparison. I will add some pics, when my lens finally arrive.

Oldhand · Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 11:34 am Post subject:

Farside · Expire: 2013-12-27

I bought a Kobori Vivitar in 2009 and took some reasonable pics with it, but it's a bit of a lump and shake, as always with lumps, is an issue.
However, it acquitted itself well...

Click on first pic to read the plaque.

asfethan · Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2014 11:02 pm Post subject:

PhantomLord · Joined: 08 Apr 2013 Posts: 476 Location: Szczecin, Poland

Hi asfethan,

As for mflenses forum's photos, there was big server crash earlier in this year and a lot of images simply were lost. Attila who runs this site done tremendous job of putting whole forum back together, but unfortunately there were some loses. We must simply rebuild the forum by posting new reviews and tests Smile

.

As for Vivitar 28-200 by Kobori, well truth to be told I quickly sold it. Don't get me wrong - it was really good zoom, but I found out I usually prefer to take two or three lenses across the 28-200 range instead of one zoom.

Lens itself as I remember:
Pros:
- range - whole range was completely usable, however stopping down was most welcome
- v.good wide angle quality
- quite good tele quality

Cons:
- distortion and vignetting on 28mm
- very short focusing turn - for me it was quite hard to focus spot on, focusing was quick, but for me it was to quick and actually that was the main reason why I sold this lens
- quality at long end - in the need of stopping down.

In conclusion:
If you'll remember it's all-in-one lens and it has some reasonable limitations and if you'll use it accordingly - it's a very good lens, big and heavy, but good.
If you however, like me, prefer to take instead Viv S1 28-90mm and Viv S1 70-210mm lenses to cover whole range the gain in the quality will be very noticeable.
It's all the case of priorities, because there were one or two occasions when I was regretting selling this lens. Now I'm looking for Kiron 28-210mm which has even better reputation, but wasn't as good as this Vivitar 28-200 Kobori in the Oldhand's test.

I just remembered that here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjLohxJh you could find a few photos I attached to the auction when I was selling the lens.

Good luck and please, share some photos taken with the lens when it'll arrive Smile

.
Mateusz

Oldhand · Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2014 11:47 pm Post subject:

Since I posted this originally, I should comment.
I have sold the Cosina and the Kiron versions of this lens but naturally, I kept the Kobori.
It is as Phantomlord has described it, but it has given me some outstandingly happy images.
Here are a few.
OH

asfethan · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2014 10:13 am Post subject:

PhantomLord · Joined: 08 Apr 2013 Posts: 476 Location: Szczecin, Poland

Hi asfethan, if my memory serves well and judging from your photos, this Viv should be at least as good as Tokina. I don't know what Pentax body have you bought, but if it has denser sensor (more MPix) it will be more demanding to the lens as well.

As I remember correctly, this Viv is stunningly sharp on short end, while not so much on the long end. You need to stop it a little bit on the long end to get proper results, however I do think you'll be happy with the results especially if it's PK/A version Smile

.

Let us know, when it arrives.

Mateusz

asfethan · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2014 12:28 pm Post subject:

PhantomLord · Joined: 08 Apr 2013 Posts: 476 Location: Szczecin, Poland

afethan so there's a few days of waiting for you. I know something about it as two days ago I bought Vivitar Series 1 24-48/3.8 and my friend will be bringing me this lens from abroad at 3rd January Wink

.

As for Pentax, there's a few users of K10D on this forum and I cannot remember any wrong comment about the body. The photos taken with it looks always nice and clean with nice colours, so I think it's great purchase. I'm on Canon 600d and I'm not planning to change due to lack of funds but I like this body very much. Liveview + magic lantern firmware + lcd hood = great manual focus lenses experience Smile

. As for Pentax bodies I cannot forgive Pentax that if you're using plain PK or M42->PK lenses you have to use this 'green button' thing to measure the exposure. Of course, most of the time I'm on full manual anyway, but sometimes fully working Aperture priority with auto exposure in Canon is very useful. In-body stabilization...that's great deal I miss actually, but hey, there's always compromises Smile

.

Mateusz

asfethan · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2014 2:26 pm Post subject:

Oh yes. That little green thing made me mad in first weeks. Today I can't live without the way how M lenses works on Pentax. I have crippled Hanimex f2.8/24mm on which someone removed aperture control pin. It was so painful to manualy change aperture with aperture ring on focused scene. I didn't hit right f also.

Btw I am not using that metering very often. I just make shot and improve shutter speed manually because that metering isn't 100% working with M lenses (sometimes it's pretty bad). That's why I have enabled over/under-exposure indication on after-shot preview. K10D doesn't have life view but I don't think I could use that because if there is something I really love it's viewfinder and all that manual related stuff about shooting Laughing

(oh yes and long lasting battery)

I got for Xmas a SMC Pentax-A f1.7/50mm (that -A means PK-A) and I'm getting this Vivitar because sometimes you just need to shoot and you don't have time to play with all that things. Exempli gratia on celebrations, in ZOO and etc. There you need good auto light-metering and you have to concentrate only on focusing, composition and capturing right moments - still a lot of things to do Laughing

Mountains will not run before you so you can guess shutter speed, check aperture, set composition and etc... You don't need to touch that green thing if you really don't want to Twisted Evil

If there is a thing I really miss about Canon it's that dial control! Ooooh that magical thing. Shocked

1st EDIT:
I noticed you mentioned that with M42->PK you have to use the green button. Actually you CAN use Av mode. With PK lenses you can't because body will not set aperture via control pin in AV. But when you remove the pin, or you have M42 without that pin it has aperture set constantly and it's changing as you move with aperture ring. This is the thing I don't like on that Hanimex I mentioned because you have to move aperture ring after you focused with full hole.

2nd EDIT:
This time I noticed your gallery after re-reading your posts Laughing

Very nice shots I think I'll be satisfied.

3rd EDIT:
I looked at your albums and I think that 28-90 isn't better than Kobori super-zoom in this case. Also I don't like something about that 28-85 version. Really nice shots you have with that Viv Tele-zoom 70-205. That's really good performer. Smile

4th EDIT:
Btw this is Auto Chinon Zoom MC f4-5.6/35-200mm and if the sharpness at the max focal length will be like that I'll be satisfied.
But I hope the Kobori will have more modern color rendition than this old-postcard-maker Chinon. Laughing

I think the green spectrum is a little bit suppresed.

PhantomLord · Joined: 08 Apr 2013 Posts: 476 Location: Szczecin, Poland

asfethan, you said you looked through my gallery, but you actually looked through gallery that I use while selling a lens. The 28-90 Series 1 I put for sale was a piece with lens separation issues, so it performed significantly worse than my current, clean copy.

It's absolutely not true what you said that Viv S1 28-90 doesn't look any better than Kobori super zoom Smile

. Of course, this 28-200 zoom is good, but far behind than shorter range, series 1 and f/2.8-3.5 lens Wink

. I think a lot of guys will backed me on this thought.

What's more, my normal gallery is mentioned in my signature and is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mateuszmolik/sets/

As for using optical viewfinder for focusing MFlenses...well yes, if we're talking about big, bright viewfinders of Pentax ME Super or Olympus OM1-4 then of course it's absolute pleasure, especially with centre split-prism for me. Focusing MFlenses with optical viewfinders of current APS-S cameras of Nikon/Canon/Pentax...well it's absolutely PITA, those viewfinders are tiny, dark and developed intentionally for autofocus. Focus confirmation doesn't work as reliable as it should so it's just one way for me and that's Liveview but only with LCD loupe (so I could hold camera by the eye, like with optical viewfinder). By the way, you said about M42 lenses that they could be stopped down without green button...well yes, but I buy you a beer if you could nail-down the focus any lens stopped down to f/8 at APS-C digital body with standard focusing screen Wink

.

You've mentioned that you didn't like 28-85 on those few photos and you're spot on. It was terrible lens, however knowing it's good reputation I would say that, it was something wrong with my copy.

Anyway, I really hope you'll get your lens soon and that you'll be very happy with it Smile

.

Mateusz

asfethan · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 11:25 am Post subject:

balazer · Joined: 09 Sep 2012 Posts: 7

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 3754 Location: Switzerland

While of course I can't replace oldhand's test images, I just got a like-new Vivitar 3.5-5.3/28-200mm yesterday. Of course I was
I'm curious to see how this lens performs, especially since it seems to have a quite good reputation, so I did a few test shots today.
Those images taken today in Luzern have given me a first idea about its performance. The wide end clearly is much better than the 100mm-200mm range. All following remarks are valid for 24MP FF cameras:

Surpisingly, at f=28mm the image quality is nearly as good as a common vintage 2.8/28mm prime lens, even wide open.

At f=50mm and wide open, the image is soft and has some "glow". Stopping down to f5.6 solves the problem, and the lens becomes very good - nearly as good as a prime.

At f=100mm things don't look so good any more. Wide open (f5) the broders and corners are not sharp, even though the center is really good. One has to stop down to f11 ... f16 to get a decent image quality over the entire frame, and even then lateral CAs are much more obvious than with a common 2.8/100mm prime lens.

Finally, at 200mm and f5.3 the lens is sharp only in the center of the frame; borders and corners are really unsharp, and there are hefty lateral CAs. Stopping down to f11 or f16 doesn't solve the problem. At f=200mm the lens is way inferior to any OEM 200mm prime (or 80-200mm zoom) from the same time frame.

It seems that the Vivitar (Kobori) 3.5-5.3/28-200mm was designed to have a good performance for wideangle/normal landscape images, and for capturing nice portraits in the tele range (100mm-200mm).

Stephan

iangreenhalgh1 · Expire: 2014-01-07

The Kobori 28-200 has long been known to be surprisingly decent in many situations.

Oldhand · Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2020 9:09 pm Post subject:

Thank you for refreshing our memories of the Kobori zoom.
Unfortunately the comparative images were lost from the forum some years ago.
There are several shots that I took with it listed in this post:
http://forum.mflenses.com/vivitar-kobori-28-200-f3-5-5-3-t72277.html

Tom

D1N0 · Joined: 07 Aug 2012 Posts: 2498

The Tamron 26a also seems to perform quite well. Alass it is 35-210 not 28
http://forum.mflenses.com/tamron-sp-35-210mm-f-3-5-4-2-26a-t58477.html

But perhaps that is also a more modern design.

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 3754 Location: Switzerland

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 3754 Location: Switzerland

[quote="stevemark"]