Pentacon 135mm - what is it good for? (review)

[GaborF]

Hi guys,

This article is intended to stir up the muddied waters, with a newbie (like me) drawing hasty conclusions on Pentacon 135mm.
This is a review, and a very "basic" at it - however looking at the official review of this lens at the main page, I thought some more attention does not hurt for this lens.

Background: I have 3 MF lenses today - the amazing Micro Nikkor 55 3.5, Helios M44-2, and Pentacon 135mm 2.8.

Read on, comment, post, share pictures - its all possible in the "democratic" internet world.

Pentacon 135mm 2.8
Tested with: Nikon 5100, with adapter.
Weight: 515 gramms - I think its perfect, not too light.
Lens hood: built in, likely yours will not be perfect like new, as its on mount, and likely does not fit exactly as well as intended. This is a little minus.
Focusing: great focus ring. Focusing on Nikon bodies, you can set a "beep" sound in Manual mode to show you when something is in focus. On Nikon 5100 this is not possible - however on the 5100 in the viewfinder lowest left corner there is a green dot that will light up if your subject is in focus - with any lens you put on (even if it does not have electronic attachment, like this one).

Image sharpness:
Image sharpness is an important factor for me and others. I did not expect stellar performance, having heard that Pentacon 135mm is mostly used for portrait photography, but I decided to test this. Used F2.8 or F4.0 setting – while likely not the sharpest setting for a lens, I felt we should take advantage of this low aperture mode.



Overall I have to say I am a bit disappointed - I expected lot more “tack” sharp images – this area is a letdown for me.


Bokeh:
Bokeh is an important factor for me. Not only your subject has to look good, but having a great background helps a lot in the overall impression. I know there are 15 and 6 or 8 bladed Pentacons, and everyone loves the 15 bladed versions, however I read tests that didn’t show great difference in Bokeh between the 6/8 or 15 bladed Pentacons – as bokeh is not solely defined by the number of blades only, but by lens used as well, etc. However I had great expectations Pentacon being the “Bokeh king” – and the results are rather nice:






Macro photography:
Having an F2.8 135mm lens can help in macro photography. Adding some extension tubes – in this case, the 12mm one – can get you closer to your images, and with F2.8 you could capture some great moments. 135mm will allow you to stay further away from your subject, for Macro photography, seems to be the ideal distance. However – image sharpness/quality is still a letdown for me – even though we had bad light conditions, I would have expected more. I have Micro Nikkor 55mm 3.5 and I know how good it is – this lens - even though a prime lens – cannot stand up to the Micro-Nikkor’s sharpness/quality. See the example below:




Sport photography:
Could the fast aperture speed be good for sport photography? In theory yes, but let’s see the shots in practice. These have been taken with Aperture 2.8, Shutter: 750, and ISO: 640. These are crops from larger images.







Ofcourse it helps that the images are taken on 16Megapixels, which allows for crops like these above (100%).






I would say this is a really strong feature of the lens – when a friend would ask me “so what is Pentacon 135 good for?” I would reply… “Sport and Action photography, what else?!”. I think this is the strongest point of the lens.

Street photography:
So when we say we have bad weather, could we – should we take our Pentacon 135 for a walk? Ofcourse being a prime lens its good for capturing distant shots, but maybe also great for detail photography. It’s F2.8 aperture allows this to be used in this gray/hazy weather we have, and in theory, its an absolute win to go out and take detail shots with this fast lens. On the following image, you can see a comparison of the Pentacon 135mm and Nikon 55-300VR zoom lens – both set at same settings – 135mm shooting range, lowest aperture possible for both (2.8 for Pentacon and 4.6 for Nikon zoom lens) 125 shutter speed and 100 ISO on both. Ofcourse the 2nd image of the Nikon will look darker, due to the lower aperture setting (4.6)



However when we look at both images, we would wonder if post-processing for the Nikon image could make it better (adding more brightness) – and we would be better off with a higher quality picture? Using the same shutter speed, how would ISO change if we used a slower zoom lens? First image is the Pentacon at 2.8, ISO 250, second is Nikon 55-300, 4.6 with ISO 750. There is substantial difference with ISO "availability" - big win for speed:



The 125 shutter speed was the absolute minimum I could use the Pentacon on – I took 5 images, and used the best one for this – with the 4 others, on 1/125 speed the image had shaken, and was more blurred. This was my best best out of 5 images. But… and here comes the but… the 55-300 has VR. Could we go lower with the Nikon zoom lens, and see how VR can compensate? On the next image, you will see the Pentacon 135mm on lowest aperture and shutter (1/125), and the Nikon with lowest aperture and lowest shutter (1/20). I had to take 3 images with Nikon to have a good one taken at 1/20.



If you have these 2 lenses, I would not consider taking the Pentacon for street photography.


Image quality:
The images taken with the Pentacon seemed to exhibit some strange purple fringing (Chromatic aberration?). I am unsure if the electronic mode of the Nikon lenses correct this, or if this is due to the lack of using the lens hood, or just the feature of the lens. However this blue fringing is apparent in several images I took, specially with high contrast areas. When my hand moved at photography, and blur occurred, this blue/purple fringing become even more apparent. Some images to share with you.






Overall impressions:
If someone would ask me – so Pentacon 135mm, what is it good for? I would reply without hesitation: fast moving sport photography. I have not found image quality up to the standards I expected, nor the Macro, nor the daylight photography. Stepping the lens down maybe improves image quality a little – but having experienced what manual lenses are capable of (Micro-Nikkor 55 3.5 or Helios 44-2) – I have to say I come away unimpressed after my tests.






The jury is out – your opinion also counts – but the “Bokeh-monster” is not the "bird of prey" hunting down all other lenses, and it has not impressed me on this rainy day.

[Pancolart]

There is one category missing in your lens specs. Lens state: a lemon.

[iangreenhalgh1]

A lemon indeed, I've never seen a Pentacon 2.8/135 that performed as poorly as this one and I've had 5 or 6 of them.

The Pentacon 2.8/135 does vary a bit in sharpness wide open, the best one I've had was very sharp wide open, other copies were less sharp but still much sharper than this lemon copy, sorry to say.

I've never seen CA as bad as this copy either.

[pich900]

You spend probably a lot of time to make this review, so I think it's important to first thanks you about that...

The results are indeed quite surprising because this lens is supposed to be much better. I had also the pentacon 2.8/135mm (electric version and meyer version with preset), both were very good lenses and indeed much better that what you let us see...
May be is your lens a "lemon" like said pancolart (with a little bit abrupt way of speaking I must say...), but because you use the lens with Nikon, it could also be simply a problem with your adapter!
If you use an adapter with extra glass (to allow infinity focus), I'm pretty sure the problem is coming from that. In that case, try to remove the extra glass and you should see a big difference with the IQ of your lens .....Of course, in that case you will not be allow to focus more than few meters (let say 5 or 7 meters for the 135mm I think...).
The weather condition were quite poor, so try again your lens with better light and it will also change your point of view about this lens (if of course the lens is in good condition).....
An other issue about the focusing and the green dot. Try your lens on tripod with a non moving object, first turn clockwise the focusing ring till the green dot appear, then shoot, then try again counterclockwise until the green dot appear and shoot again...you should probably see a difference in term of sharpness.....I'm not sure my explication is very understandable, my poor English is almost at his limit ......

But again, thanks a lot for your time and for this review, it's always much appreciate on this forum to read the point of view of different users, even if that lens is for most of Mflenses members already well know....

[ForenSeil]

I also had a copy which was muuuch better
CAs and clarity are looking awful
Your shots are looking partially worse than 100% crops from my copy

Is the infinity setting sitting about correct? If yes one or more of the glass-elements in the lens is decentered, if not a part is missing.

[visualopsins]

I think discussed before here but I've forgotten -- does anybody know why there are so many lemons of this lens? Was a bad batch of lenses made? Have these been assembled (or re-assembled ) incorrectly, flipping an element, installing a wrong element, or something like that? I guess knowing this would require somebody to disassemble a bunch of these to compare. Anybody?

I don't use mine very often. For me the re-learning period -- the number of snaps before I get real comfortable and confident I'm getting the best from it -- is always longer than with other lenses, even longer than when changing from telephoto to uwa for example. Sometimes it takes me a few days. Once I've got it working for me, the lens performs fantastic. I think it is experience looking at differences between viewfinder & results, learning to see results beforehand, in the viewfinder. These things are difficult to explain... Technique seems more important with this lens than with any other lens I own.

[iangreenhalgh1]

I think QC took a dive in the 1980s DDR. Also, I suspect the problem is more with the mechanics (which are not good on either CZJ or Pentacon lenses from the 70s onwards) than the optics. Stiff focus and stuck apertures are very common, and I suspect incorrect assembly is the reason why a lot of Pentacon lenses are lemons. The older Meyers don't suffer from these problems BTW.

Also, if the Nikon adapter has glass, it could be destroying the IQ, Nikons are a bad choice for using old mf lenses as most of them won't reach infinity.

[ForenSeil]

[ForenSeil]

[visualopsins]

[GaborF]

First of all, I would like to thank the many replies.
I got an adapter without glass element, and asked a photo-repair company to set infinity back to "normal".
They have done the re-assemby, and this might have made the issues seem here - I will go back and complain, try to get this corrected.

Afterall, I would rather have a lens that does not reach infinity and makes beautiful pictures up to 8meters....


Thanks again for the comments - it reinforced my view that its not the lens type that is the problem!
Kudos to all!

[iangreenhalgh1]

Aah, sounds like something went wrong with re-assembly, hope they can fix it for you.

This is one of the best lenses for shots upto 8m of people, flowers etc imho.

[sichko]

I wonder how infinity was "set to normal". One "trick", which has been described for this situation, is to unscrew the rear element a little so that it moves closer to the sensor. I don't know how well it works since I never tried it myself. I always found a "glass adaptor" to be entirely satisfactory.

[peterqd]

Hang on a sec. Is this the later "automatic" Pentacon 135 with the aperture dial near the mount, or the earlier Meyer-design preset version with the aperture dial bear the front lens? Only the preset version with 15-blade iris is the bokeh-monster. The highlights in your pics look nicely round, but the busy bokeh doesn't look right to me, so I can't tell from the pictures.

The later automatic version was a cheaper design, with poorer IQ. Before we start criticising the lens or looking for explanations we should at least know which version it is.

[GaborF]

This is the "automatic" Pentacon 135 with aperture dial near the mount - not 15 blade version, but less.

[Aanything]

[Attila]

[peterqd]

[iangreenhalgh1]

Same factory, they just changed the name, Meyer became the lens making arm of the large VEB Pentacon state-owned enterprise.

There is no reason why the Pentacon version will be poorer in IQ, yes there are some poor copies, but the the good copies are excellent, every bit as good as any of the Meyer versions and in some cases better, the sharpest one I had was a Pentacon with 15 blades. I compared two copies of the PB mount version and one was excellent, as good as any of the M42 ones and the other was not as good (but still much better than some 135s I've tried like the Vivitar 2.3/135 or the Sigma made Pentacon PB 2.8/135). Same applies to the other Meyer/Pentacon lenses, I directly compared Meyer Oreston 1.8/50 to Pentacon 1.8/50 in both M42 and PB, the Oreston and Pentacon were identical apart from colour temperature due to different coatings, the PB lens rendering differently, I think it's a revised design. In the UK, there are a lot more Pentacon around than Meyers, so the chances of getting a lemon are much higher with Pentacon. The QC did drop off of course, but in no way does that mean Pentacons are necessarily less good than older Meyer versions. The coatings are better on the Pentacons for one thing.

[peterqd]

[iangreenhalgh1]

It's not for me to do your research for you, the history of VEB Pentacon is only a Google away

[martinsmith99]

From Wiki...
"In 1959 several Dresden camera manufacturers, among them VEB Kamerawerke Freital, were joined to create Volkseigener Betrieb Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden, which was renamed in 1964 to VEB Pentacon Dresden. In 1968, VEB Feinoptisches Werk Görlitz was integrated into VEB Pentacon. Accordingly, the former Meyer-Optik Görlitz lenses were now renamed to „Pentacon“ ."

As clear as mud!

[Jethro Tull]

Interesting test with mixed results too, personally i'd use it for close up flower shots and forget birds etc, there does seem to be quite a bit of noise? what was lighting like when you shot the birds? i had similar results today using a Tokina 100mm ie very dull day and even with iso at 100 on tripod didn't have a single keeper but ya can't win everytime
I find bokeh with loads of round swirls a bit fussy for flowers and tends to draw eye away from the flower, i recently bought a Hoya 135mm f2.8 (cheap) its turned out to be a cracking lens and can't wait for some decent weather to really test it.
I'd try some more shots with the Pentacon in better light and keep to iso 100, getting a decent shot isn't just down to the glass you use its a combination of camera settings/wather conditions and a cetain amount of luck but still great fun experimenting and when ya get on that pops its certainly a thrill......... usually followed by 100 crap ones in my case lol
Cheers
Brian

[hifisapi]

I think there must be something wrong with the lens as the images are very soft.

[GaborF]

Yes, as I said in an earlier post (likely overlooked) - I took the lens to be set to infinity with adapter (glassless adapter). So they diassembled the lens, and internally tried to change it to reach max. focal lenght. My feeling is that this didnt go perfectly (from camera, the close shots are better, but the further you focus more and more issues come up).

Took the lens back to the company, they will reset the optics, and see if we can get a better focal lenght by taking some part off from the end of the adapter (avoiding the internal part to hit the mirror).

So all in all, this post was to see if the issue lied with the lens (you all told me this is not normal, and all Pentacon leses should look great) - which made me go back to the shop, who accepted the complaint and will fix it.

In the end, I will do another review, once with the proper Pentacon - to give it justice!