Minolta MC lenses suggestion

<p>Hi.Why familiar with the Minolta AF cameras and lenses I didn't know much about their manual focus counterparts.<br>

Picked a little "setup" of a SRT101 and 3 minolta lenses at a garage sale the past weekend.A 16mm Minolta MC fisheye a 85mm/1.7 MC and a 300mm/4.5 MC in beautiful condition.<br>

Took some test rolls this week.What impressed me was the feeling gave by these old little jewels when you focus.It is like somebody takes your heart,put some butter on it and starts to rub it very slowly.<br>

Fell instantly in love and now I want to add some in my collection!Just wanted to ask about some advices for a wide (not fish eye) ,a normal (around 50) and a slightly longer telephoto(100-135).Saw there are MC and MD versions but the later MD seem to have a lot of plastic and they don't look as prettier(maybe I am wrong).<br>

I wil post some pictures when my scans come back .Thank you</p>

<p>Interesting analogy. ;-)</p>

<p>Good collection, too. If you got those for less than a couple hundred, you did well.</p>

<p>Wide, you can get 28/2 or 35. I have the 35 1.8 and 2.8. The 1.8 is supposedly superb, but I haven't compared it to its slower brethen.</p>

<p>You can get 50 or 58mm, f/1.2 or f/1.4 in both lenses. The 1.4 will be the sharper by most accounts, but the 1.2 is more sublime in the bokeh.</p>

<p>Plenty of options in 100 and 135. I have a cheap Midori 135/2.8 that got decent marks. The 135/2 is hard to find, and I'm sure the 100/2.5 is good. I think there's a 100/2, and if it's half as good as the AF 100/2, then it'd be worth it.</p>

<p>The MD lenses add shutter priority for the newer cameras. I like the MC versions better, for the same reasons.</p>

<p>Hope that helps.</p>

<p>As for the normal lenses, the 58/1.4 MC is great, maybe a little soft wide open but a classic look. The 50/1.4 MC is better than the MD. There's a 45/2.0 that I like but I don't know if it comes in MC. The 50/1.7 MD is far better than you'd expect.</p>

<p>There are a few good 135mm Rokkors. There's an f/2 that's fantastic... not sure if it's MC or only MD. The f/2.8 is good and very common. Then there are some 3rd party options. The early generations of Vivitar Series 1 70-210 zooms are quite good. There are some exotic lenses - the 85mm Varisoft, the VFC and Shift-CA wide angle lenses - but you could go nuts or spend a ton trying to get them.</p>

<p>Thank you for the responses.I got the outfit for 135 from an old lady which I tought it was a good price.They seem to be much more from what I checked.Plus they were with their original boxes and everything.Just checked the suggestions and the 24mm VFC looks gorgeous (and pricey) but fortunately I have some extra to spend.I was planning to get an Alpha 850 but these are too nice</p>

<p>Wow, you're hooked pretty well already, aren't you? :)</p>

I have a 135mm MC Tele Rokkor - PF 1:2.8 that is a great lens. My manual focus stuff has been sitting on the shelf for a long time, and I recently thinned it out a bit and was planning to sell all the MC and MD stuff except for my 50mm 1:1.4. This 135mm was going to be sold too, but today I put it on the a-mount adapter and took it along with me to shoot a small concert, and it worked great. I'll definitely be keeping it now. It's a good lens, and the built in hood is nice too.

<p>I like the best of both worlds: rokkor lenses on Sony Alpha cameras :)</p>

<p>www.rokkorfiles.com</p>

<p>^ Good source of Rokkor reviews and general info.</p>

<p>Take care.</p>

Don't overlook Minolta's Celtic line of lenses. Optically the same as their higher priced Rokkor cousins, but simpler coating.

I have the 135mm f2.8 MD Celtic, 35mm f2.8 Celtic, and 28mm f2.8 Celtic.

For 100mm consider the compact 100mm f2.5 MD or the 100mm f3.5 MC Macro Rokkor, depending upon how speed you

need and how close you want to focus.

<p>The 35/2.8 MC is a decently sharp lens. If it did not have the problem of oil on the aperture blades I would like it more. The 35/1.8 MC is very nice and is my favorite 35 for Minoltas. I don't agree that the 50/1.4 MC is sharper than the 50/1.4 MD. I have three 50/1.4 MC Rokkors, a first version MD Rokkor-X, a second version (smaller) MD Rokkor-X and a 50/1.4 MD. The 50/1.4 MD lenses are at least as good as the MC. The reason the MC is my favorite is that it has all metal barrel and ring construction and has a nice feel to it. Of the many slower stanard Rokkors I have the 50/1.7 MC Rokkor-X is my favorite for the same reason. The 50/1.7 MD is not very impressively built but is still very sharp. The 200m f/3.5 Rokkors are very good. I have an older 200/3.5 Auto Rokkor, a second version 200/3.5 MC and a 200/3.5 MC Rokkor-X. The last two are very sharp with the Rokkor-X being better in tricky lighting. Some of the later Celtics are identical to theor Rokkor counterparts and have the same coating. I now have 13 lenses in my Celtic collection including 3 of the 50/3.5 macro.</p>

<p>As for suggestions of lenses, you might want to go with a 24mm MD lens, a 35mm MD Rokkor-X (reviewed on the rokkorfiles site), one of the 50mm f1.4's with a 55mm filter size, and any of the Minolta 135mm f2.8 lenses. You could probably pick up all four for under $250 off of ebay if you're opportunistic. There are more expensive lenses at each of those focal lengths, but even those are not clearly better (though I'm not sure about the 135mm f2). You're paying extra for extra speed, sometimes better bokeh, more solid build, etc, and this usually comes at the expense of reduced sharpness. In choosing a 24mm lens, VFC is a neat trick, but given that depth of field is so large anyway, I just never thought up enough shots where I would need VFC to justify the additional expense. <br>

For macro, digital is a lot easier to get good shots with, in my book, so I'm not sure I would bother with a dedicated film macro lens. However, you could get something that would adapt to the digital too. The adapter is pretty cheap.</p>

<p>Thank you for all the great advices !!<br>

With the money saved for the alpha 850 I got :a black SRT 101,a black SRT 201 ,a 21mm,2x 24 (one VFC),35/1.8 ,100/2.5,58/1.2 ,28/2 ,135/2.8 and 200/3.5.<br>

Most of them with personality: NL,QE,PF .....<br>

Going to take them for shooting daily in NY City before and after work.<br>

Again thanks for everything</p>

<p>Wow, that's some quick full-immersion Minolta. Have fun! Post some pics. I'm particularly curious to see what you make of the VFC lens.</p>

<p>The only reason a digital camera would be better for macro shooting than a film camera is that you could take a very large number of shots to get a few good ones and then just delete the bad ones. For now at least I prefer doing macro work with film equipment. It may be that I have more practice that way. Now that I have a DSLR I will be trying more digital macro. I know that digital shooting makes it easier to bracket focus and merge multiple images to get what looks like better depth of field in the final image. This changes the perspective but is still an interesting technique.</p>