135mm/270mm and zoom.

[bogolisk]

Hi,

I heard that generally 135mm MF lenses are mostly excellent and some of them like the vivitar can be found cheap on evilBay. What make it hard to build a bad 135mm?

I have a 2x-crop body (e-p1). What would one use the efl of 270mm for?

til now, for MF legacy lenses, I only stick to primes. Are the old 70-210mm lenses are generally good?

[Attila]

Zooms are difficult lenses so not good as generally like 135mm primes.
In all lenses brand names are generally pretty good no matter is zoom or primes like Nikon, Leica , Contax etc. Third party makers quality is very vary and generally not good in zooms. Cheap and good zooms in this range Tamron zooms especially Tamron SP lines one of them good as any primes this is Tamron SP 70-210mm f3.5 constants aperture zoom.

[fatdeeman]

You can use the 270mm for whatever you like!

You can use it for long range portraits and street photography, you can use it for nature shots, aeroplanes, transport such as cars and ships and you can use it for selective landscapes where you pick out interesting areas in a landscape and use the 270mm to capture those areas without any or their surroundings.

At the risk of sounding cheesy, the only limit is your imagination.

Just take the lens out with you and see what happens.

[Excalibur]

***Are the old 70-210mm lenses are generally good?***

Ones recommended on forums like this are very good. I've posted quite a few shots on forums in comparison with primes, and on a computer screen you can't see the difference for sharpness.
A digital camera might be able to show the difference more in a crop, as using film it depends on the quality of the scan, but using my very good Epson scanner have proved to myself some of my old zooms (at their sweetspots) can equal some of my well known primes e.g Canon, Pentax......

[Helios]

I use only (time to time) a couple of MF zoom lenses : Tokina (35-105, 75-260),Vivitar (75-205 f/3, , a Soligor CD 28-80, a Variozenitar 25-45, and Tamron 70-210,60-300,200-500.They are really good. I kept other zoom lenses only for collection's sake, such as Russian Granit 80-200, "noname" (really !) 80-200, 28-70 tamron, "old" 35/105 Rokkor (Tokina made) 16 elements in MC/MD mount . This last one gave me stunning results on film !
In few words, with Tamron lenses , you won't never disappointed.