Mirage (Korean make) 200/3.5 M42 - Thanks Peter !

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

Peter (member peterqd) sent me this very curious and rather handsome lens from England -

Its a "Mirage" which is certainly a merchants trademark. After some examination it was found to have a tiny "Made in Korea" by the lens mount, so obviously its not a Japanese product. I had to open the thing to switch it to manual operation (I just put an aluminum tube over the inside portion of the stop-down pin, to keep the internal mechanism depressed), and the design reminded me a lot of Sigmas of the period, almost certainly mid-late 1970's, but possibly into the 1980's - there were still screw mount cameras being made in the 1980's !

The maker may be any of the Korean Chaebol (trading/industrial conglomerates), perhaps the ancestor of Samyang/Phoenix. The Koreans typically copied or licensed a Japanese design (and they are still at it). I did recently see a late model Kominar 135, in Fujica bayonet, which had a very close stylistic resemblance to this. Komine seems to have supplied a lot of lenses in Fujica mount just before they gave up on the consumer lens business. Perhaps Komine licensed its designs to a Korean company ? If so, it was in the 1980's, as the Fujica bayonet was introduced in 1980.

In any case, this is a very conventional M42 auto-only lens without any aperture linkages or other fripperies, obviously something intended for the cheap end of the SLR market. Given that, its quite honestly and solidly made. There is a problem with this one as it does not give infinity focus confirm on my K100D, but seems to with my other Pentaxes. Perhaps its just barely short of infinity ?

Performance is mixed. It is quite soft wide open, the sort of dreamy portrait effect is quite easy to get at f/3.5 with this one, if thats what you're looking for. By f/5.6 it is quite sharp. This is one of those lenses that seems to snap quickly into focus with the K100. I don't understand why some lenses are easier to focus than others, but its so. This one is certainly easy to work with. It has no vices otherwise, though contrast isn't as high as some.

These first three are at f/3.5 - most of the rest are at f/8 or so.

The bird -

crop -