Vivitar 400 / 5.6

[Lloydy]

I didn't think I was going to get to the camera fair last weekend, but I managed to get there early and have a quick look around. And as ever, I'm a sucker for a nice looking lens at a bargain price.
This Vivitar 400 is unmarked, it's faster than my 6.3 Soligor, it's made by HOYA ( edited, I put SUN originally ) and it's a lens that I didn't know about. Even attached to an Exacta camera it looked good, for £18 without the camera and the Exacta T2 mount I had to have it.
First impressions? it's a superbly built pre set lens with 18 blades, nicely balanced with a tripod mount, and the focusing is nicely weighted.







I have done a quick test and I like it a lot, it's sharp, has good resolution and the CA isn't bad at all. Wide open with very high contrast there is a purple fringe, but it is one colour and easy to PP away. Close down one stop and it's gone.
This is a picture taken with a 50mm lens with the tripod in the same place as the testing, the two red arrows are the power poles which are 1/2 mile away and an AC unit on foundry, you can read the Hitachi label. All the pictures are taken with the Sony A6000 at ISO500 and without any PP at all. Most are shot at f8 except for the 100% crop CA shot which is wide open and misfocused, which possibly makes the CA worse.



The yellow warning notices on the poles are about 10 inches high. The wide open shot had very little CA, this f8 shot just looked better.


I think the Hitachi label is about 1.5 inches high.


This was close to the 20 feet closest focus distance, which is a lot - but not what this lens was intended for.


This is wide open, I didn't nail focus but the bokeh isn't bad.


Bad focus again, but if the CA is no worse then it is easy to PP away.


I like Vivitar lenses, and it's generally accepted that Komine made lenses are the best of them. But this SUN lens has won me over, I shall be using this a lot.

[guardian]

Gosh that's a beautiful lens, Lloydy. Congrats! You are very fortunate. Enjoy.

Just look at that aperture. Almost too many blades to count!!

Photos are very nice, too.

[marcusBMG]

Nice lens (I want one)

i am just curious how you know this is made by Sun?

[Lloydy]

[Lloydy]

This is something like a 110% crop, unsharpened, from the f8 shot of the AC unit on the foundry wall.



That's not bad at all, in the 50mm shot you can barely see the AC unit.

[marcusBMG]

Lloydy I am pretty sure this lens predates the numbering schema. The 7xx doesn't mean anything.

[Lloydy]

Yeah, I think you might be right, the lens is more like a Tokina than anything else. It's nothing like any SUN that I have for sure, but I haven't got any big old HOYA's to compare it to. The aperture does however look very similar to the Dollonds 200 / 3.5 that I have which is a Tokina, and now that I've got the Dollonds out of the display case I can see the family resemblance.
It's a Tokina.

[Himself]

[Lloydy]

That's the list that says it's a HOYA, but I really don't think it is - it's exactly the same family as the 200 Tokina that I have with the Dollonds name on it. I think Markus is right, that list is OK for later Vivitars, I believe the list comes from the 'Great 28mm Vivitar Bestiary' - for which it is probably fairly accurate.

[ManualFocus-G]

This is from the same line as the first Vivitars (that I'm aware of). I have the 85/1.8 (superb), have had the 135/3.5 (very good), 35/2.8 (appalling...think there was something wrong with it), 300/5.6. The 300mm was pants. They all look great though

[luisalegria]

"Pants" is a British technical term?
I have the 300mm of this line, and mine isn't too good, compared to others of the same era.

[Big Dawg]

I had one of these and liked it a lot. Not quite as sharp as my Sigma 50-500 and a little harder to use for the small birds I like to photograph but still for the money (mine was a gift from a friend) hard to beat.

[ManualFocus-G]

[luisalegria]

"Sick" is an American technical term, or it has maybe crossed the ocean from there to here, or maybe the other way.
Whatever the case, "pants" hasn't made it.
Not that we don't wear pants, well maybe some don't, particularly in San Francisco, and I try not to take any pictures of those fellows.

[ManualFocus-G]

Haha I saw a few people without pants in SF on my last visit Some of them were a bit scary though.