Vivitar 28-90 SER1

Kamerer · Joined: 24 Jun 2008 Posts: 389 Location: Russia Moscow

90mm open aperture

Lloydy · Expire: 2022-01-01

It's a good lens, very under rated and overlooked so it's usually cheap, It's one of the best walkabout lenses I've got.

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Back in my film days, the 28-90 S1 was one of my two most favorite walking-around lenses. Here's a Kodachrome shot I took with that lens. I duped the slide with my Sony NEX 7 and a Nikon 55mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor.

Canon F-1, Vivitar Series 1 28-90, Kodachrome 64

Kamerer · Joined: 24 Jun 2008 Posts: 389 Location: Russia Moscow

crop ~30-50%

Lloydy · Expire: 2022-01-01

I think I have three of them at the moment? Rolling Eyes

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

I have two. It's hard to pass one by when you run across it priced too cheap.

Oldhand · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2022 7:20 am Post subject:

Quite an exceptional lens which I have found performs well across its focal range.
Here are some samples from a local nature reserve
Tom

#1

#2

#3

#4

D1N0 · Joined: 07 Aug 2012 Posts: 2536

I put mine on the K-1 today

grape hyacinth by The lens profile, on Flickr

archkeh 2 by The lens profile, on Flickr

Goosekeh by The lens profile, on Flickr

martinsmith99 · Expire: 2013-11-18

I've always noticed that images have a slight sepia cast with this lens, or it seems to saturate the browns a lot more.

xaprb · Joined: 28 Jan 2021 Posts: 171

I agree about the sepia tones. There's something low-saturation and color-shifted about the lens, a little hard to describe, but it produces nostalgic colors straight out of camera. Its optical "flaws" such as low resolution and glowiness wide open contribute as well. I took mine on a family vacation and snapped a photo of my children in the hotel room, framed by a big window and the fancy wallpaper they had there (sorry, not a photo I am willing to upload here). Everyone who's seen that photo has immediately remarked on how much they love the colors. Not photographers, I mean, just family members and friends who've seen it. A very unique look, and very obvious when people are in the photo because we're so attuned to skin tones and how they should look. When looking at someone else's sample photos I have no idea what color a stone should be, or bark on a tree or petals on a flower, but when skin is color-shifted it's obvious. Not a faithful or accurate coloring at all, but pleasing and somehow true to the memories of how we felt about the vacation, so that shot has become a favorite, has been requested for prints multiple times, put in a frame in the hallway, included in cards and the bound books we create using online services now and then...

On the other hand I think the lens is a disaster ergonomically =D Get focused, oops I zoomed a little by accident now it's out of focus, now I want to zoom and I'm not sure which way I need to turn to get back into focus... I do a lot of trial-and-error with this lens! Still, the rewards for its quirks are worthwhile.

It's all a matter of opinion, of course; my remarks here are largely devoid of facts.

Doc Sharptail · Joined: 23 Nov 2020 Posts: 1209 Location: Winnipeg Canada

I have an earlier/later vivitar 28-80 in the closet that does weird things to color as well.
This is the 2nd era series 1 with the diagonal lines for focus grip rubber.
At first I thought the lab had blown the scans of the c-41's.
The negatives confirmed the strange coloring.
It does not get used much.

-D.S.

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Huh, I've never noticed a sepia color shift with my 28-90.

I mean, maybe it's there, but it's minor. By the way, all the above shots were slides -- and I'm pretty sure they're all Kodacchrome.

martinsmith99 · Expire: 2013-11-18

The 1st 3 seem to have it. Maybe it's my eyes.

D1N0 · Joined: 07 Aug 2012 Posts: 2536

I shoot AWB. It is always correcting for green with this lens.

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4055 Location: Switzerland

Looking at these images, I was intrigued to try the Vivitar 2.8-3.5/28-90 as well.
A nice looking sample with Minolta MD bayonet is on its way ... Wink

S

RokkorDoctor · Expire: 2025-05-01

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Yep, that's a good point. In all my above images, except for the last one, there are ample areas of gray to be examined and these gray areas look pretty neutral to me. So, again, with the copy of this lens I owned (that's my caveat), I didn't see any sepia cast to the images taken with this lens. I should add perhaps that, back in my film days (most productive days shooting film, that is), which stretched from the early 80s to the early to mid 90s, I used my S1 28-90 a lot. It was one of my two most often used walk-around lenses and most of the images I shot with it were Kodachrome.

And yes, I was very aware of the nature of slide film and its narrow exposure latitude. It was because of this, in fact, that I preferred the original Canon F-1, with its 12% partial area metering pattern. Later, when I switched to Nikon, I found that the F3's 80-20 metering pattern actually worked very well with slide film, and I've always suspected that Nikon designed this tighter than usual pattern for the F3 so that exposure accuracy with slide film would be improved over their standard 60-40 pattern.

martinsmith99 · Expire: 2013-11-18

Well, I still see the cast in those images, or at least they are picking up browns more than other lenses.

The grey stones in the 1st image seem to show that; also, the skin tones look very warm. Or at least it's what I see.

RokkorDoctor · Expire: 2025-05-01

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4055 Location: Switzerland

caspert79 · Joined: 31 Oct 2010 Posts: 3213 Location: The Netherlands

From the images I've seen, this lens seems quite a bit better than the S1 35-85/2.8.

D1N0 · Joined: 07 Aug 2012 Posts: 2536

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4055 Location: Switzerland

Usually I only mount Minolta lenses on my Minolta cameras - but here's an exception Wink

The Vivitar Series 1 2.8-3,5/28-90mm certainly looks good on a Minolta X-500. The Motor and especially its grip are ideal for sligthly larger lenses such as the S1 28-90mm!

S

xaprb · Joined: 28 Jan 2021 Posts: 171

Hey, what time is it? IT'S SCIENCE TIME! OK not that this is to be taken too seriously, but in the spirit of a) fun and b) getting something more apples-to-apples as far as colors and overall rendition, I decided to shoot the same scene with my camera with this lens at both 28 and 90mm wide open, and also with a couple of my modern lenses. I'm using a crop-sensor Fujifilm X-S10 so we won't get the full field of view. The modern lenses are the excellent Fuji 90mm f2 set at f4 to match the Vivitar, and the pancake Fuji 27mm f2.8. As you might expect, both of them tell the Fuji camera how to correct aberrations and colors and so on. I used a Rayqual adapter to mount the Vivitar lens. I set white balance before beginning by shooting a WhiBal test card with the Fuji 27mm, then left that setting for the rest of the shots. I shot Fuji 27mm, Vivitar 28-90 at 28mm, ditto at 90mm, then Fuji 90mm. I set the camera in manual mode with fixed ISO 160, and set exposure once with each set of lenses and left it the same for the next lens, rechecking shutter speed when I changed focal length. I mounted the camera on a tripod. The Vivitar lens is heavy enough that it shifted even on the tripod, so I adjusted to recenter the focus target (dead center in the frame) when I put the Fuji 90mm lens on. The camera is set to defaults (no sharpening, "standard" film emulation/colors, etc.) I've stripped EXIF from the photos but otherwise they're straight from the camera. Images should be clickable for full size. If I've forgotten anything salient, ask questions and I'll try to answer.

Fujifilm 27mm f2.8

Vivitar 28-90mm at 28mm and f2.8

Vivitar 28-90mm at 90mm and f4

Fujifilm 90mm f2 at f4