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Three good 100mm lenses
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 3:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

tb_a wrote:
Woodrim,

thanks for that very informative thread which surprised me to a large extent.

The Kaleinar is obviously one lens which I should also consider to acquire. It fit's in my overall impression of the quality of the Russian lenses which I rate as rather high. So far I luckily got always only very good copies and I never ever had any problem with those lenses up to now. Some of them are really exceptional good and still the best you can get for your money.

I was already considering the servicing of my defective Orestor (obviously the similar problem like you mentioned before with your copy, most likely the lubricant issue) when I saw Nordentro's pictures recently published here. However, as I also have the Topcor lens which is also in need of some CLA activities I can certainly safe the money for the reactivation of this lens as obviously the rather low optical quality does not justify any further investment in this lens.

I would have guessed exactly the opposite before and expected the Topcor to be superior to the Orestor.

Anyway, it's somehow a "happy end" for me as the Orestor (M42) is usable on all of my cameras incl. FF and the Topcor (Exakta) is only limited to my mirrorless crop sensor cameras.

Any experience out of your planned CLA activity for the Orestor would be highly welcome too. Wink


I think the Topcor is as worthy of repair as the Orestor. While my test showed a very tiny difference, the bigger learning is that the lenses are essentially equal. I have not used my Orestor enough to get a full appreciation, but have really enjoyed the Topcor. I posted real life results to reinforce how each lens performs wonderfully. While I do like the Kalejnar, its build quality is not as good as the Topcor, but that doesn't matter as long as they both keep working - and that can't be felt in the results. The Orestor benefits from being a preset aperture and having a wonderful round iris at all stops. I have not yet looked at minimum focus distances, but suspect they are close to one another.

My recommendation is to be happy with any one of these you might have and only collect the others if you're like me and just enjoy having them.


PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 6:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is a really informative thread!

It prompted me to take a second look at my lenses, and I ended up finding a few more 100mm f/2.8's that I had forgotten about - including an Orestor. I didn't find a Kaleinar, but I did find an auto Vivitar in M42 and a Nikon series E.

Just for the heck of it. I shot a photo with each lens using Woodrim's methodology ( all shot on tripod on Sony A7 Mii at f/2.8 in aperture preferred auto, sunny white balance, no special in camera manipulation and resized without PP in CC2015). Here are the lenses in no particular order:




And here are the photos taken with them, again in no particular order. Can anyone spot the Orestor or the Topcor?

#1



#2



#3



#4




Enjoy!


PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 8:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thought I would make the game a little easier. Here is an impromptu resolution test of the above four lenses in the same order. 100% crops are provided below, again in the same order, 1,2,3,4.

#1



#2

[url=http://forum.mflenses.com/userpix/20157/big_1817_DSC01287full_1.jpg]
[/url]

#3



#4




-------------------


#1 100%



#2 100%



#3 100%



#4 100%




All the best,

Paul


PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 8:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think you've just demonstrated the same thing - they're all basically the same. But I'll take a shot at it:

Nikon
Topcor
Vivitar
Meyer


PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 9:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Vivitar
Nikon
Topcor
Meyer


PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 9:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

thanks for the test and awesome samples!

I have the topcor but not the others in this test, and a few other japanese like canon fd, nikon pentax. I like the topcor very much, but also the konica.


PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 11:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The lenses in my test were ordered this way:

#1 - Orestor
#2 - Topcor
#3 - Nikkor
#4 - Vivitar

Woodrim put it most eloquently:

"My recommendation is to be happy with any one of these you might have and only collect the others if you're like me and just enjoy having them."


PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 12:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

pdccameras wrote:
The lenses in my test were ordered this way:

#1 - Orestor
#2 - Topcor
#3 - Nikkor
#4 - Vivitar

Woodrim put it most eloquently:

"My recommendation is to be happy with any one of these you might have and only collect the others if you're like me and just enjoy having them."


Thanks for your comparison. However, I wasn't able to see any qualitative differences in your pictures as some critical circumstances have been missing to cause typical lens failures such as e.g. CA's like purple fringing. In other words, for non-critical situations they seem to perform totally equal.

I also liked Woodrim's statement very much. Wink