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Two Meike E-Mount lenses on the A6500
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2017 12:26 am    Post subject: Two Meike E-Mount lenses on the A6500 Reply with quote

Meike 2.0/50.













A6500 & Meike 2.8/28









My Zeiss Contax and Rokkor MC/MD lenses outperform these Meike lenses but the Meike lenses are small, light, well made, have modern coatings, and are reasonably priced. I bought them to use as a travel/walk-around kit with an NEX-3N but today I decided to mount them on an A6500.


PostPosted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 2:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Given these results, outperform by not so much imho!


PostPosted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 4:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

visualopsins wrote:
Given these results, outperform by not so much imho!


In good light yes, the Meike lenses are fine. In harsh or low light situations I would rather have the better quality lenses to work with.


PostPosted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 5:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Living at 56.4N in wet and dull northern England I learned that in good light, most lenses produce the goods, it is in bad light that the great ones really stand out and the less good ones struggle.

What I am interested in is when makers like Meike and Yongnuo start incorporating more modern technology such as injection moulded plastic aspherical elements, as at the moment they are just remaking old designs.


PostPosted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 6:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Contax/Rokkors are better? I wouldn't have expected that at all! Our old lenses must be incredible with modern multicoating and glassmaking materials! Hopefully even better, compact lenses of old style will be made in China at low cost eventually... but personally, I also think the current crop lack any soul or character, and the colour transmission always seems off. They don't seem as well made as eg. modern Voigtlander (Cosina) but it's expected for the price. Unfortunately it will be quite long before they compete with Japanese brands, simply due to the market they are in, not because they're technologically or creatively limited.


PostPosted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 7:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Doesn't surprise me the Contax/Rokkor are better, the old glass types are not allowed to be made anymore due to environmental regulations, so no glass containing lead, lanthanum or thorium.

Also, these Meike are very much budget items built to a low price point, which the Contax and Rokkor lenses weren't, the budget cheap items from back then were made by companies like Ozone and Cosina and a lot of them are not very good at all.


PostPosted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 7:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
Doesn't surprise me the Contax/Rokkor are better, the old glass types are not allowed to be made anymore due to environmental regulations, so no glass containing lead, lanthanum or thorium.

Also, these Meike are very much budget items built to a low price point, which the Contax and Rokkor lenses weren't, the budget cheap items from back then were made by companies like Ozone and Cosina and a lot of them are not very good at all.


Those are fair points, but I'd have thought that technological/manufacturing advances would have closed the gap completely. It is kind of an unfair comparison too, since the older lenses cover 135 while the Meike is designed for APS-C.

Inflation has not been fair to us with regards to price at all. At least people are (?) hopefully earning more to make these lenses these days, though I suppose it's actually mostly automated now. Realistically, it's management and investors and shareholders and board members earning good dividends at our expense. Rolling Eyes Then again, if we all had deep pockets, this type of forum might not exist in the first place. Idea


PostPosted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 7:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

As far as manufacturing, there's not much improvement that can be made in the grinding and polishing of lens elements as that was perfected a long time ago and to very fine tolerances, same with the construction of the mechanical elements, what improvements have been made are in the area of automation and cost reduction rather than quality.

Coatings have improved too, but with the excellence of the 1970s multicoatings like Zeiss T*, Pentax SMC, Fuji EBC etc. then the improvements are small, especially when we are talking about their application to relatively simple prime lens designs.

Where we can expect improvements is in new glass types, new optical resins and the use of aspherical elements which have been made much easier and cheaper to manufacture by injection moulding technology. Lens designs will also become more complex - look at the optical scheme of the Zeiss Otus 1.4/55 and compare it to the 1960's Planar 1.4/55 for Contarex, both were designed as the ultimate fast 'normal' lens of their day and the Otus is vastly more complex.


PostPosted: Sun Sep 03, 2017 12:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

iangreenhalgh1 wrote:

Where we can expect improvements is in new glass types, new optical resins and the use of aspherical elements which have been made much easier and cheaper to manufacture by injection moulding technology. Lens designs will also become more complex - look at the optical scheme of the Zeiss Otus 1.4/55 and compare it to the 1960's Planar 1.4/55 for Contarex, both were designed as the ultimate fast 'normal' lens of their day and the Otus is vastly more complex.


The rest of what you said makes total sense - I wasn't sure about total technical capability but I don't use the most expensive glass of the period either. Adjusted for inflation, a lot of old lenses were cheap compared to what we pay today. Surely it must be even cheaper now, as you said, but I'm not sure this is applicable beyond the most basic starter prime and zoom lenses. Modern pro SLR lenses are too large for me on size and it seems like there isn't much of a middle ground in terms of quality. Voigtlaender makes really nice lenses, but not always reasonably priced, as they sell quite affordably second-hand. But again, I'm not really keen on their rendering.

To read that this new Chinese glass is not even competing with 50 year old designs is quite disappointing, but then I feel even better about my own investment in Minolta glass. Smile It would be great to try modern Voigtlaender but it seems the only lenses in stock in most stores here are the MFT series and they're not really consistent when it comes to production/styling changes and mount availability either - obviously stores are quite hesitant to purchase stock.

I guess they haven't come far at all compared to historical Japanese glass, but compared to historical Chinese glass, it's an extremely interesting development! Hopefully this will spur Western businesses to become interested in manufacturing again, too.


PostPosted: Mon Sep 04, 2017 9:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I remember purchasing a rokkor 28mm f2.8 in the 70s (>40 years ago) costing well over 100€ at the time (between 7 and 800 FF) which was a very very high price for an almost standard lens (the Vivitar f3.8 75-205mm I think cost me double this). This 28mm f2.8 costed probably much more than the say Sony 28mm f 2.0 costs today....not to mention the 1 stop advantage and the "new" technologies used now. So lenses may have got cheaper. They have got bigger for many.
It is clear vintage lenses have got much cheaper (they are 2nd hand)....except for the 250mm f5.6 which was very cheap when I bought it in the 80s...