old Pentax 400mm f/5.6 and Novoflex use

[mike_cowan1]

Does anyone have any experience using an old Pentax K-mount SMC 400mm f/5.6 manual diaphragm lens ? Sheer optical quality wide open is what I'm mainly interested in: sharpness, contrast,and freedom from flare. How would it compare to the corresponding lenses by Sigma (which I tried but didn't like) or Tokina ? I'm hoping to adapt it to a Novoflex Follow-Focus bellows for use on largish birds and animals, so its ergonomics don't matter to me. Thanks for any information.

[mark_lindamood]

Send this question to pentax-discuss@frii.com, and look for answers at http://www.pentax.com/discuss_archives/9804/. Ask and they will answer.

[duane_galensky]

My simple, wild-a*s guess is that if you tried the latest Sigma 400/5.6 design and didn't like it, that an older design lens will probably not cut it either. The only decent older 400/5.6 design I'm personally aware of is the Nikkor, and they're darn expensive, even used.

[bobatkins]

I agree with Duane that an old, probably non-apochromatic, telephoto

of this vintage would be very unlikely to yield images as sharp as

modern lenses, even 3rd party lenses like the Sigma 400/5.6 APO.

While you can get away with non APO designs at shorter focal lengths

(so some older lenses of shorter focal length may be just as good as

modern designs), at 400mm apochromatic correction makes a significant

difference.

[dan_smith]

Why not just use a Novoflex follow focus system since you want to try and adapt the Pentax lens to it anyway? A lot of us have use the Novoflex stuff as we have progressed. It is designed to work and does so quite well though the glass isn't quite in the same league as the L or ED type.

[bobatkins]

I know the old Novoflex telephotos were pretty marginal lenses,

non-apo designs and not sharp by current standards (as Dan points

out). However I heard a rumor that they have new lenses which are

significantly better then the old ones. Just a rumor. I haven't

seen one and they don't seem to get much press these days. I guess

AF systems make them pretty much obsolete now, unless you are on

a tight budget and staying with a MF system.

[don_baccus]

I ran across a young German birder/amateur photographer who had the Novoflex with a most intriguing difference: apparently at one time, Leica made a front-end replacement for it. You took the old Novoflex front elements (presumably a traditional convex/concave pair of elements) off and replaced them with the Leitz unit. It was fairly spendy but he had some sample slides and they were much better than those from the Novoflex alone (I've seen samples taken by other owners and they're definitely not very good by today's standards).

 

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There's not really much of a point to my post, but it was one of the weirder things I've seen. I've never seen an ad for such a thing here, new or used, but he assured me that the Leitz front-end was quite popular with German bird photographers.

[hans_buchholdt]

The Leitz conversion was so popular infact that Leica marketed their own "rebadged" Novoflex mount, the same Novoflex two grip follow focus system with a Leica logo and Leica glass...it was offered for several years after the 400/560 in Leica's own sliding tube mount was discontinued. The 400 in Novoflex mount was offered until 1997.

[paal_jensen1]

Since no one have tried to answer the original question I'll try: I have not used the manual diaphragm Pentax lens, but I once owned the A 400/5.6 non-ED lens. This lens was superb and made me wonder what the ED fuzz was all about. Stopped down, the lens even outperformed $5000 ED lenses. I believe the A lens was a slight modification of the older K lens. Hence I will asume that the K-lens is a very good lens that can be recommended to someone on a budget.

 

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Paal

[bobatkins]

While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and people's standards do vary, I'd point out that it is not possible to make a

non-ED lens with the performance of a modern ED lens. It's not just a matter of "getting the design right", it's a matter of physics. In

non ED lenses you cannot reduce the secondary spectrum (change in focal length depending on color) to less than

about (focal length)*(0.002), which for a 400mm lens means almost

1mm difference in focal length across the visible spectrum. Stopping down doesn't help this particular problem.