Best T2 mount lens ?

yinyangbt · Expire: 2012-12-27

I have a T2/NEX adapter . I am not familiar with this mount or lenses that used it. What lenses in this mount could match this good sensor ?

ManualFocus-G · Expire: 2014-11-24

There are hundreds! I really like my Vivitar 85/1.8 - it has low contrast but buttery smooth bokeh Smile

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

As Graham says, many, particularly telephoto primes.

Some of the best -

Tokina 105/2.8
Sankor 135/2.8
Tokina 135/3.5
Tokina 200/4.5
Tokina 300/5.5

All these are pretty common and should be cheap.

ManualFocus-G · Expire: 2014-11-24

Ooh I forgot about Sankor, the 105/2.5 is utterly brilliant Smile

Lloydy · Expire: 2022-01-01

Don't discount the Soligors, check out the big threads here. There are some gems, there's also a few not so good. I have 3 T2 Soligors, the 135 is good, the 200 is very good but my 35 is very average. But....they were cheap. Wink

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

Just to be clear, when we say Sankor or Tokina or Tamron, etc.,, the odds are you will not find them under these names.

In the 1960's almost all of these were sold under merchants brands, like Soligor (Soligor was a trademark used by Allied Impex Co. of New York). There were hundreds of brands, some common some rare. You can find the same lens in 100 brands, in some cases.

To know what you are getting you will need to recognize the design.

SXR_Mark · Joined: 12 Jun 2010 Posts: 506 Location: England

It is obvious from the above comments that you should stick to longer focal length lenses. The registration distance of the T2 mount is 55mm, which means that lenses below, say, 50mm in focal length are likely to be retro-focal (the second nodal point is between the last lens surface and the image plane). When these lenses are likely to have been made. retro-focal designs were not so good. I have a Soligor 28mm f2.8 in T2 mount and it has the optical finesse of the bottom of a Coke bottle. Laughing

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

Wide angle SLR lenses (below about 40mm) all have to be retrofocal.

T-mount lenses are not that different than Canon, Nikon or Pentax lenses of the time in this regard.

The T mount also allows wide angle lenses to sit quite deep in the mount, so that their rear elements protrude beyond the back of the mount, just like lenses with a dedicated mount. This is a simple problem in mechanical design.

The real problem with T-mount wide angles is just the fact that they are very early, the technology was not well developed, and, frankly, were made by small companies that could not make them as well as the majors as they had less R&D resources and poorer quality control. There are plenty of 35mm and 28mm T-mount lenses but I personally haven't found a good one.

There is supposed to be a T-mount preset version of the Kino/Kiron 28/2.5; that lens in Auto mount is supposed to be quite good.

There are very few "normal" lenses available in T-mount BTW. I only know of one, Taisei's (Tamron) 58mm f/1.2 (most often found in Taika Harigon brand) of about 1960 some of which were made in fixed mounts and some in T-mount.