Sears (Mamiya SX/Tokina) 90-230/4.5 - last of the line

[luisalegria]

I picked this up several months ago in a batch of other Sears lenses.



It is actually a Mamiya SX-series lens, made by Tokina as with so many other Mamiya lenses. This is a modernized version of an old design by Tokina. The older version is perhaps the most common zoom lens in the secondhand market, sold under dozens of brands in all sorts of mounts. The SX or modernized version is much harder to find. This older one was also sold by Sears -

http://forum.mflenses.com/sears-tokina-90-230-4-5-common-as-dirt-t7798,highlight,dirt.html

The design is actually even older, from the 1960's, the earliest of this design were T-mount presets. I'm looking for one of those.

Mamiya SX lenses were standard M42 mounts, but with one difference - they had an extra pin that transferred the aperture setting to the camera, to allow open-aperture metering. This pin will prevent mounting SX lenses on any DSLR M42 adapter/camera mount. Luckily, its often possible to just pull it out - and restore it if necessary.

The other problem with Mamiya SX lenses is that like so many later M42 lenses, they have no manual-auto switch. This lens is also a little difficult to disassemble. So for this one I drilled and tapped a hole by the stop-down pin, and screwed in a piece of brass to hold down the pin. This works very well, its easy to remove if necessary, and is a practical solution if there is enough room in the mount for a screw hole.



As for performance - this is quite good for such an old design I think. It is sharp wide-open, though its prone to color fringing. The lens also focuses much closer than the original version (less than 2 m vs 3), holds focus while zooming fairly well,and gets to infinity throughout the range. I've had a lot of poor light lately (overcast and foggy), so a lot of these are at f/4.5.













The bird -



crop -

[spiralcity]

[Nesster]

Very nice photographs and presentation, as usual.

I have the T4 Vivitar incarnation, and was quite pleased with the performance towards the 90mm end - very nice bokeh/separation and color density.

[luisalegria]

Hi Spiralcity !

I have looked at that site. The gentleman has made some unwarranted assumptions I believe. His information does not show that Mamiya made the lenses for their consumer SLR lines specifically. Its a large leap of logic to assume that because Mamiya made some lenses that they made all of them. We can't even say that about Nikon.

The consumer SLR line was a business that Mamiya entered tentatively with a "me too" M42 camera after having failed repeatedly earlier. It makes sense to go third-party for this stuff, it reduces the investment required and reduces risk.

Its clear that for these, through the SX series, the Mamiya branded lenses were the same ones that half the new entries in the Japanese SLR business were using, and a good portion of the third-party lens merchants too.

For example, a simple side-by-side comparison of the equivalent Mamiya lens vs (for example) a Vivitar of the same period with the "37xxxx.."(Tokina) serial number will show that they are twin brothers in slightly different clothing. Have a look at the very distinctive 90-230/4.5 zooms Mamiya supplied for the TL series - they are the same as the just as distinctive 90-230/4.5 zooms that were sold under dozens of brand names by vendors around the world. Either Mamiya was supplying a large chunk of the global third party lens business, or these all (including Mamiya) were getting them from the same source.

[spiralcity]

To be honest i cant say either way about Mamiya. Im not an expert in that area. I do know for a fact that Ron has done more research than anyone I know on the subject. He has massed all the data that is available
on the subject.

Im not disagreeing with you, but I find it VERY hard to doubt Ron.

I will pass yopur thoghts on to Ron and I'll post his reply on this thread.

Posted below is what Ron had to say about a similar assumption.

[Nesster]

Some further information, at least applicable for the USA:
http://www.vermontel.net/~wsalati/CasualCollector/t4_for_two.htm

[casualcollector]

Some lively discussion going on here so I'll chime in.

The reference to Ron Herron's site and his assertion that Mamiya made their own lenses can be taken in several ways. Could be that Mamiya did make their own lenses for their 35mm SLR cameras. Since they were into private label manufacture of cameras fairly early on, perhaps they applied the same scheme to lenses.

Perhaps the Setagaya Koki factory supplied many, but not all, of the Mamiya/Sekor lenses. My guess is that the same factory, doing business as Tokyo Koki/Tokina, supplied the same lenses to whoever wanted to buy them. That list would include Ricoh, Miranda, Sears, K-Mart, Lentar, Bushnell, Soligor, Vivitar and many, many others.

A few lenses in the Mamiy/Sekor line that didn't come from the Sekor/Tokina factory would be the 50-55mm normals and the distinctive 60mm macro. I think these lenses came from Tomioka. Why would Sekor/Tokina not make normal lenses? If a perfectly good product is available, why re-invent the wheel?

The money was not to be made in 50mm normals, every camera came with one. The money was in accessory wide, tele and zoom lenses and that's what Sekor/Tokina went after as did Nitto/Komine, Kino Precision, Cima Kogaku, Makina, Cosina, Sankyo Kohki/Komura along with the better known Tamron and Sigma.

That Mamiya and Tokina were the same company at one time is just a guess on my part but it seems to make a certain amount of sense. Until we learn Japanese and talk with people who worked in these factories 40 years ago we're not going to know for sure.

Bill

P.S. Nesster:

I wrote that Soligor - Vivitar - T4 piece about five years ago. I've changed some of my opinions since then!

[spiralcity]

I actually find this to be rather educational.

I'm still waiting on a reply from Ron.

[spiralcity]

[casualcollector]

[yalcinaydin]

Not outstanding but looks very nice but I don't think that it would produce the same images on my hands

[lulalake]

Luis,
I have the exact same lens and had poor results with it but after seeing yours, I did a serious cleaning and had some very good results:



I'm very pleased with it and will use it more often now.

Thanks

Jules