Ricoh XR Rikenon 2/50: great contrast

[alex ph]

There are some nice samples and good reviews of this lens spread here and there in the net. Some call it "poor man's Summicron". As long as I don't have Summicron, I can only enjoy the Rikenon's qualities of its own.

I am really excited to discover how contrasty and pleasing in colours the images are coming from this lens. It is enough to make a quick auto-contrast or to touch slightly the contrast slider thus correcting the SOOC jpeg which Sony Nex tends to slightly overexpose with this lens on.

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Converted into BW via a quick desaturation, the images produced by this lens simply shine.

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[Doc Sharptail]

Nice shots.

In #2 it seems to separate the blue shades quite well.
A nice sharp keeper for sure!

I have a later Ricoh 2X teleconverter here that I am tempted to experiment on with changing mounts.
The coatings on it are very impressive.

-D.S.

[D1N0]

I have this lens too. Good contrasts indeed. The best variant is the all metal built xr rikenonen 50mm 1:2 without additional L or S which have plastic barrels.

According to the diagrams at Lens DB it has a different optical formula as the 1.7 variant. Both 6/5 but very different (compared with e.g. Takumar 1.8 and 2.0 lenses) elements.

2.0 and 1.7

[alex ph]

Thank you for the feedback, fellows!

D1N0, the variation of optical schemes looks interesting.

In terms of close performance to this great Ricoh lens I'd rate Cosinon-S 2/50 which gives similarly saturated colours and contrasts, very nicely conbertible to BW.

[D1N0]