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Cosina Cosinon-S 2/50 shines in BW
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PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2022 1:44 am    Post subject: Cosina Cosinon-S 2/50 shines in BW Reply with quote
While XR Rikenon 2/50 has a kind of cult following and may reach pretty high prices, less well known lenses from the 1970 may have a similar and impressively nice rendering. To my taste, a modest Cosinon-S 2/50 belongs to this list, and you may find it for 10-20 EUR BIN price.

The lens renders with some purple fringing WO and has a general inclination towards magenta. But it gives a generally contrasty image already SOOC, easily improved to an even better state with a simple hit of auto-contrast button. The lens gives a gentle swirl WO. Even if the bokeh looks at times pretty charged, OOF to in-focus transitions look attractive.

Converted into BW, the images are on a par with XR Rikenon, Yashica ML and some other well considered glass, adding some more modern microcontrast as compared to many vintage lenses.

Here are some samples taken with APS-C Sony Nex, form wide open to f5.6 and slightly edited using basic brightness/contrast tweaks.


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PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2022 8:01 am    Post subject: Re: Cosina Cosinon-S 2/50 shines in BW Reply with quote
alex ph wrote:
While XR Rikenon 2/50 has a kind of cult following and may reach pretty high prices, less well known lenses from the 1970 may have a similar and impressively nice rendering. To my taste, a modest Cosinon-S 2/50 belongs to this list, and you may find it for 10-20 EUR BIN price.

The lens renders with some purple fringing WO and has a general inclination towards magenta. But it gives a generally contrasty image already SOOC, easily improved to an even better state with a simple hit of auto-contrast button. The lens gives a gentle swirl WO. Even if the bokeh looks at times pretty charged, OOF to in-focus transitions look attractive.

Converted into BW, the images are on a par with XR Rikenon, Yashica ML and some other well considered glass, adding some more modern microcontrast as compared to many vintage lenses.

Here are some samples taken with APS-C Sony Nex, form wide open to f5.6 and slightly edited using basic brightness/contrast tweaks.


Very nice images. When I was starting with photography in 1981, I've been using a cheap Cosina CT-1A alongside a Pentax K-1000. At that time, the difference of IQ between the two standard lenses (SMC Pentax 55 mm f/2 and Cosina Cosinon S 50 mm f/2) was quite visible in my color slides (Fujichrome 50), with a clear advantage to the SMC Pentax K lens...

Recently, I've found a Cosinon-S 50 mm f/2 in Vivitar guise and I'm quite impressed by the sharpness and contrast. I wonder if the different Cosinon-S lenses (50mm f/2, 50 mm f/1,8, 50 mm f/1,7), which all have a 6 elements in 5 groups construction, are not more or less the same.


PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2022 11:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Nice. The Rikenon probably has better Bokeh (I got mine when they were still cheap 5 or 6 euro's). It looks a bit smeared to me. Rendering is very nice though. I made a bid for one that's sold cheap with a broken Chinon camera and a Tokina 35-70mm 1:4. We'll see how it turns out.
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