Meyer Oreston 1.8/50 - and a rubber band

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

I obtained this zebra-skinned beauty a couple of weeks ago, but I have used it less than I would like because it has a fatal flaw, to me anyway. There is no auto-manual switch, and it turns out that the stop-down mechanism is quite difficult to modify to make it a manual lens without risking permanent damage. I hate having to remember to press the button to stop down when taking the shot.

So I developed a workaround - the good old rubber band, which in this case had to be supplemented with a little piece of balsa wood to hold down the button -

This works surprisingly well, and it does not get in the way.

My general impression of the lens is that it has an interesting and different color rendering vis-a-vis Takumars. It also focuses very close, down to less than 1 foot/1/3 meter. That is very useful. I have no complaints about resolution or optical quality, which seems to be more than good enough. The build quality is not very good however.