Komura 28mm f/3.5 Unidapter

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

I picked this one up in excellent shape, complete with original case, attached to a broken Yashica Electro.

Here it is with its other Unidapter mate, the 135/2.8

This is a 1960's (I believe) Sankyo Kohki Komura product with the interchangeable Unidapter mount, in this case M42, but I also have a Nikon Unidapter. Works very much like a T-mount but of course the lens side thread is 48mm (as per my calipers) instead of 42mm.

This lens is not listed among the Unidapter lenses in the well known @1970 catalog, its place it seems having been taken by the automatic versions by that time, though of course this does not mean it was unavailable. So dating it is a bit of a guess. All I can say with reasonable confidence is sometime after 1961 and pre-1970, most likely somewhat later in this period I think.

It fits in the series of Komura presets with the usual chrome aperture ring for the Unidapter line, same nice glossy baked enamel finish, and same engraving. It seems to be an 8-element lens as specified for the automatic versions. It has the typical Komura "star" aperture and the typical Komura light touch on the focus ring, as well as very prominent aperture rings. All in all it is very pleasant to use on a DSLR.

It is in fine cosmetic condition, and fully functional as well, except for spots of worn-off coating on the front element.

Performance - Though it is very sharp in the center, even wide open (at least to the limits of my sensor), it has serious field curvature as one would expect with an early retrofocus lens like this. Even on APS-C, and even down to f/8, the sides and corners of the frame are fuzzy and smeared. It is considerably worse in this respect than the Super Takumar 28/3.5 and even my Accura (Sankyo) 28/3.5 preset, from about the same era. It also does not handle flare well at all, do not put the sun in the frame, or even a strong solar reflection, unless thats what you want.

Samples -

kuuan · Expire: 2014-12-26

it's a very beautiful lens, I had one just like your's that was in pristine condition too.
Performance was just as you described, the one thing that I found attractive, besides the looks of the lens itself and it's good build quality, was it's color rendering and the colors of your samples look very beautiful to me again. However I did sell it again.