Chinon 55mm f1.4 Tomioka...

[magkelly]

Just scored one tonight with a GAF L-14 SLR in beautiful shape. This is my first actual Chinon Tomioka branded lens. I do have a copy of the 55mm f1.4 that looks like it but that is not branded. It's going to be interesting to see how they compare. I'll take pics and do a comparison when I have them both. If they are exactly the same then likely I'll flip that copy and make myself a few $$$$. Might as well seeing as they usually go for a pretty sweet sum and I'm not that hung up on labels. Honestly I am not sure they are the same lens. My first copy of (not labeled) the Chinon 55mm f1.4 was a fair bit sharper than the copy I have now. It's still a good lens, but it's not quite as good as the one I sold. It's pretty comparable to the other Chinon 50/55's I have which is to say "very nice" but it's not what I'd call a pixie dust lens and the first Chinon 55 I had definitely was. That one was a wonder of a lens. Sharp as a tack and it had some beautiful bokeh. I really, really hoping this copy is like that one.

[iangreenhalgh1]

Make sure you test it out before selling one of them - the QC on these was very spotty and you do find copies that are rotten.

[aoleg]

[magkelly]

It arrived today and I must say I was not too thrilled with the seller for a minute there. I cleaned it up okay, but it took a while. It had junk all over it, not fungus fortunately, tree sap I think and actual dirt not just dust. Leatherette strip was a bit grungy even after a good wipe off and it was cut too short. I stripped it off, cut a piece of red leather to fit that and put a red leather piece on the cap. I've been on a kick lately "decorating" some of my lenses, removing ugly rubber grips, replacing them with black or red leather or some decorative tape. I've got this red, black and white theme thing going on with my DSLR's. I'm a photographer by trade. I shoot with 2 Pentax K-30's in ruby red and stormtrooper white and a standard black K5II. The K5II is my main body but I do use the K-30's quite a bit also, particularly when I am working with kids. I used leather from some journals I found on sale recently at Office Depot. It's just a bit thicker leather than I'd like but so far I've not found any any thinner anywhere else so whatever.

Anyway, so far so good. Both lenses seem about the same to me. I'm not getting any appreciable difference between the lens labeled Tomioka and the one that's not. There's not much difference between them except the one labeled Tomioka has a silver lens mount and the one that's not the mount is black. They both have the silver rings and flat lens element. I think the Tomioka is in better shape overall but they both look pretty good to me. In the next few days I'm going to put on on a K-30 and one on the K5II and do some casual lens tests outdoors. But inside using items with text I honestly cannot see any difference between copies thus far. My eyes are a bit messed up though right now so I'm going to wait a few days and see if they don't clear up.

It's kind of hard to do lens tests when you can hardly see. Autoimmune disease. It's August, the dog days of summer, and I'm not up to much by way the past week or two. I've been running bad fevers and my eyes are blurry as heck. Typical of this time of year for me. I don't get a whole lot done in August, photo-wise. Soon as it gets a bit cooler I'll be out and about more though...