emmanouel_pateros

I have a spotmatic F and 3 prakticas passed from my hands. The spotmatic cannot be compared with the prakticas. It is far better in every aspect. Better construction, better focussing, better everything. The pentacon lenses are good optically but pure mechanically. The takumar 50mm f/1.4 is unbeatable lens. I use it and I get results that lenses of today cannot achieve. The other takumars like the 135mm f/3.5 and the 55mm f/1.8 are good but the carl zeiss jena 135mm f/3.5 is way better and the pentacon 50mm f/1.8 is better too. I wish I had a flektogon !!!!

I use a miranda 500cd and a cobra auto 250 with the EOS 350D without problems. The voltage issues I think is a trick of the companies because they have to sell the newer flashes. The polarity issue is the most important. If the polarity is opposite is possible to destroy the camera or the flash or both of them. The voltage issue is a problem if you use flash-guns of the 60s and 70s or early 80s. All the others that were made after 87, I think they can be used in manual mode. I have the opinion from my knowledge of electronics that the tolerance of the circuits today can handle high voltages if these voltages are applied for short time intervals. A flash triggering voltage lasts about a few milliseconds (1 to 6 msecs) so I have the opinion that it won't be dangerous.

"I would be surprised if the Pentax lenses were better than Nikons, but I think they're about as good. And, you can get them for close to the price of Russian glass. The Spotmatic is light and fast handling."

 

Why some people regard Nikon the best Japanese lens maker in the World ?

Have you ever seen a takumar lens ? Takumars, Chinons (early models), Yashinon 50 f/1.4 were made by Tomioka. Pentax had nothing to do with the lens constraction. Some other early Cosinons like the 50 f/1.2 were Tomioka lenses. Maby Tomioka constructed Nikkors 50 f/1.4 and f/1.2 Do you know that Nikon is Nikon and it is not Tomioka, Sigma, Tamron , Soligor , Kiron and I do not know what ?

Do you know that Japan does not have good earth glass? Nikon imports the good quality glass for the PRO Lenses from Ukraine. If the Ukranians did not know how to make glass, Nikon would give her nice money ? Compare Kalleinar lenses for Nikon AIS optically with the Nikkors designs. I have seen A4 prints and I cannot tell the difference.

People still try to find the difference between the Takumar 50 f/1.4 and the Yashinon 50 f/1.4 and they spent money and film for stupid things. They forget that these lenses are now nearly 50 years old and they didn't have the same life. It is not only the dust and fongus. Even a sudden change in temperature can harm the glass. Most of the Japanese f/1.4 lenses are Planar designs, and this design is sensitive(Minolta, Sears ,Mamiya). I have the Sears / Mamiya 55 f/1.4 and the Takumar 50 f/1.4 along with the Tak 55 f/1.8. I never shoot lenses wide open because I don't have film for wasting. If I had a digital camera I would play with these games. Meanwhile when somebody constructs a lens he aims to construct something good at medium apertures and a lens f/1.4 at f/8 by the laws of physics is better than a f/2.8 or a f/3.5 zoom at f/8. I learned that in the University. Optics is science is not art. Photography is art.

I don't have an Helios 103. I have the LTM J8,J3 f/1.5 and Leitz Summitar 50 f/2.0. The best lens of these is the J3. All are in excellent condition with good coating and no scratches. I believe that the J3 was the best lens ever produced in USSR at this focal length. The pics I took with these lens with cheap ferrania Italian film were better than perfect. If you find a good one it is unbeatable lens and I don't believe that lenses L39 from japan, which cost at least 5 times more, can beat this beast. I want some opinions about the Helios 103.

The best thing you can do is to buy some spray oil W40 (the blue one ) and spray all the camera especially the gears down of the curtain. Be careful not to spray the rangefinder and during this operation unscrew the lens. I did that in many cameras FED , Zorki 1, Zorki 4 and I was succesfull. Most of the people that say about CLA, that's what they do and charge you a fortune. Please be carefull with all these leica type cameras. First cock the shutter and then change speeds !!!!!

I have a summitar in perfect condition. It is a well made lens but the coating is not so tough. I never clean the lens without very serious reason. As for the quality of pictures it is good if you use the lens with knowledge of laws of optics. ie not wide open photographs of dinstant objects. A cheaper alternative is the jupiter 3 which is an exellent lens in 1/4 of the price. I have them both and I find the J3 to be sometimes more contrastry and as sharp or sharper in some apertures.

J8 is good if you find a good sample, but J3 50mm f/1.5 is outstanding. For me is the best russian lense ever made for the kiev/contax and LTM rangefinders.

I think the guy who started the conversation is not a photographer but an anticommunist who has never touched a zeiss jena or a pentacon or a jupiter lens or an Helios 40 85mm f/1.5 in his life. I have for example many many lenses from jena including the ikoflex I 1938 model with the tessar. All of these lenses are comparable to the leitz summitar f/2.0 for which I paid more money than all my russian and east german lenses. I cannot tell the difference in A4 size between the summitar and the jupiter 3 and jupiter 8 in my zorki. These guys are just the guys who learned photography from the internet and they have never touched a real lens like the Helios 40 f/1.5 85mm (Weight more than 1kg) to see what the russians and the east germans achieved in optics. The problem with the russian and east german equipment is the bodies not the lenses but if you get a good body it will last for 3 centuries. It was imposible a country with space research not to have good optics. The soviet satelites could read the plates of the cars in the time square and their good optics were copies of the carl zeiss jena lenses including the famous zeiss telescopes and binoculars.

I have the praktica nona I and it is really reliable with the cloth shutter. I have also 2 newer models with the metal shutter. Totally unreliable and most of the times I cannot cock the shutter properly. It is very obvious that the praktica company tried to save metal and other materials. The nova is a tank but it has a small problem. If you want to use it with the B setting you have to stop the lens manually because during the time the curtain is opened the lens in not completely stopped down. I find my zenits more reliable and sometimes more reliable than other japanese cameras. The chinon cs is a good solution for somebody who want a good solid leaf shutter camera with x-sync at 1/125sec. Totally reliable and dirty cheap. Much cheaper than the spotmatic. The memotron also is a very good and reliable camera with a lot of metal. The pentacon lenses are good not the bodies. With the money you pay for a pentacon lens you can get a praktica as a lens cap. That's how I got all these leaf shutter prakticas.

I have a series of cameras in m42 mount. Pentax spoptmatic 1000,Mamiya dtl 500,Praktica mtl5, mtl 5b, zenit 12 ca or xp, Zenit E, Zenit B,Zenit 122, Yashica TL Electro, Chinon CS, Chinon CE3 Memotron.

The most advanced technologically is the memotron with speeds in 1/2000 sec to 4 secs and auto exposure mode, good handling and of course electromagnetic shutter. A really good camera as well as it's cousin the CS which is completely mechanical. Very good cameras and very underrated. The yashica is very good too. Mine works very well and is light tight. The Zenits are the real battle tanks. They are like the AK 47. CST (Compact Simple Tough). The 122 is not so tough because it is plastic and has problems with the back door. You have to be carefull when you close it. I like this camera despite its little number of shutter speeds. It has a nice viewfinder that helps you a lot to focus and take a pic. The Praktica is good but not so solidly built as its russian friends. The lens of the praktica is very good because basically it is Carl Zeiss. The Spotmatic is very good camera but it is expensive and most of these cameras are used !!!! They are reliable but I think that they have given their potential. The lenses are good. Especially the f/1.4 normal lens but has turned Yellow. (Good for BW) Consequently and the good takumar lenses are not good now due to the yellow color they obtained. My f/1.4 is dead sharp but yellow.

The best choice for M42 cameras is to buy a new body Zenit 122. It goes about $120. It is a good camera and it takes every M42 lens. Take another body used, (Chinon CS) is the best Value for money. It can be found between $25 to $60 with the lens which is tomioka and it is similar to the takumar lenses. You have 2 bodies one for color and one for B/W. You are now a professional !!!

I have a pentacon 6 and a kiev 60 ttl. I have also some folders 6x9 and a Zeiss Ikoflex. For me the best cameras in the MF are the TLRs. Easier operation fewer things to go wrong and high sync Shutter speeds. But if you want interchangeable lenses and a pro look then a MF SLR is needed.

First of all. It is impossible to find used in this world a Kiev 60 which is in perfect working order. Something will be wrong. My Kiev 60 for example during winding the shutter exposes the film. I was lucky because I bought it 40 pounds with the lense and the macro rings, the filters and etc. Some others have serious problems light leaks, problems in focusing, bad frame spacing, which is because the Soviet 120 roll films had a thicker spool, wrong prisms and etc. I manage to work with this camera, using fuji and ilford films which have thicker spools, and I solved the problem of the shutter with covering the lens with the lens cap during winding the shutter.

The pentacon 6 looks better and more sophisticated design. The East Germans who designed it knew what they were doing. The camera is at least 20 years older than the kiev. When I bought it from ebay, it had a film inside which had expired 5 years ago. The camera looked like it was not used and left with the shutter cocked for centuries. I did not expect to work but after some lubrication with an oil spray and WD4 the camera looked like new. Everything works including the flash X-sync and the selftimer.

Before getting to a MF system you have to consider that :

1) The pentacon 6 is based back on 50s. Fully mechanical, without the modern design of a pentax 645

2) The Mamiya / pentax 645 is 645 and not 66. It is impossible to deliver the quality of a 66 camera.

3) The lenses for the pentax/ Mamiya are now cheaper than in the past but still not cheap. The pentax 67 and the mamiya rz67 as well as the 645 are used mostly by professionals who are carefull with their equipmant but this equipmant is used !!!!

4) The pentacon 6 system has a good wideangle lens, and the classic 80mm CZ biometar which is very good. I have used these lenses . For the Sonnar I can tell that my m42 135mm f/3.5 Sonnar is very very good. I do not know for the MF cousin.

5) Do not expect that the Japanese lenses are better optically than the East German Zeiss lenses. If in this world exists a better optically japanese lens it will cost a fortune. Japanese always were waiting for the Germans to produce a lens and then to copy it. But they were good in copying. Sometimes their lenses were equally good when they used German Imported Glass. What is true is that the finish and the mechanical part of a Japanese lens is better than a Russian Lens but not better than a biometar, or a planar T*, or a summar , summitar and other Leitz lenses. Personally I do not mind for the mechanical part. I am focused in the quality of the Glass.

6) The lenses for P6 are found now for penies. Not for penies anymore, but still cheaper than the jap lenses.

 

After all this conversation I advise you to go for a Mamiya C330 tlr or C220, or c3 or whatever. They have very good quality. The lenses are cheap and good and for me the handling of a tlr is better for MF than an SLR. I regreted not buying a C330 but for me the pantacon 6 along with the kiev 60 costed 80 pounds. It was impossible to buy a reliable Mamiya tlr with this money.

 

Ps: The zeiss ikoflex model 1939 with the tessar delivers the best results for me than my other MF SLR cameras. Think of buying a Rolleiflex or a ikoflex with the tessar. The earlier the model the better lens. My tessar is completely uncoated and it is very contrastry and dead sharp in the corners.

I bought just before 2 months a kiev 60 from a British guy on Ebay for 40 pounds. The kit included the case, camera, standard arsat lens 80mm,viewfinder, filters, macro rings and some books about MF photography. When I took the camera out of the box, I was a little afraid to touch it because of all these stupid guys who have never seen a camera like this and have always an opinion. The first thing I checked was the frame spacing and the foucusing of the camera, along with the X- flash sync. I run a roll of fuji superia 100 ASA (shots with flash) and after I delvelop the negative I was impressed. Everything was ok, sharpness very good at f/5.6, frame spacing, etc) The camera is too heavy to carry around and it needs a heavy tripod. I believe it was made for the Soviet Studio photographers and not for Photo Journalists and amateurs. The price of this camera along with the Kiev 88 for the average soviet citizen was huge. That's why I believe this camera was only for the professionals. I still cannot believe that I touch with my hands a real pro MF camera with 40 pounds. The guys in the KIEVUSA are thieves. They buy crap cameras from poor russians and just do a repairing and sell 10 times more expensive. The same happens with many Ebay PRO Sellers. I believe that due to the fact that the camera is solid and has a very simple construction, if somebody studies the kievaholics WEB pages, he can modify the camera. The other thing about flocking the internal part of the camera is useless. I know a guy who did that and the pics were worse. The flare inside is due to the lenses reflections. (Bad quality in some lenses.) In my case there is no problem with flares. I use a good hood, that's the best solution.

Kiev is nice for portraits and studio use. I would like to use it for nude photos and wedding photography. That's I believe the aim of use for these pro cameras.

I have a jupiter 9 that I bought new in the box from a russian guy 1n 1991 just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The lens was a black version M42 with a serial number starting 91. So it was made during 1991. The last period of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union was a complete chaos. People were not sure what is going to happen with the Communism and the factories were producing lower quality products than during the Stalin period for example. This is very easily observable from the products of East Germany and USSR during this period. Everybody considers for example more reliable the Salut 120 SLR than the Kiev 88. And we have to consider that the Salut was 30 years older. The same is easily observable with the pentacon cameras.

As I said before the lens was new with the box and the manual. I took with this lens great portraits, pics of flowers , macro pics and etc. When you use this lens you have to know 2 things. The first is that it is a portrait lens. That means that it works well in close distances. It is not good in the infinity focus. The second is that the lens is completely manual. It is not good for people with a very little knowledge about photography who always used comfortable Japanese AF Lenses. My lens served me all these years and proved to be better than my takumars 50mm f/1.4 ,55mm f/1.8, pentacon 135 f/2.8, Carl Zeiss Sonnar 135mm f/3.5, and other zooms I have for my Pentax K and Minolta MD mount.It produces very nice lines. As for the colors it is not very contrastry because it is not Multi Coated.

If somebody considers the fact that lenses with 85mm focal length from Canon and Nikon are at least 10 times more expensive and hard to find in good condition. And that this lens has the value that is very easily placed in every mount (Canon FD, Pentax K, Minolta MD, Olympus OM, Digital SLRs) it is a huge value for money.

My opinion is that if somebody really wants this lens, he has to buy the new model which is cheap (120$) and Multicoated and avoid the Russian Guys in the Ebay market because most of the stuff they sell was in bad condition and refurbished-repaired. This Lens is cheap new and the newer model of this decade will be better as the Russian Economy the last few years is improved and the Russians get into the Global Market. The Russians now have learned that you have to sell quality in a reasonable price and not crap that is cheap, like the Chinese for example. I recently bought a new Mir 1v from Rugfit.com and the quality of this lens has nothing to do with an older same lens I borrowed from a friend. So I insist that somebody who wants to take real pics with DSLRs, has to own this Lens, its value for money is the best in the whole market. Avoid used when somebody can buy a new MC version with 100-120 $.

I have the pancolar and 3 pentacon electric 50mm f/1.8. A sears 50mm f/1.4 and a pentax super takumar 50 f/1.4. There is no difference at all between the pancolar and the pentacon. The sears-mamiya lens is my best lens in this focal length and is the most heavy. I have never seen a bad heavy lens. I believe that the most important factor when you buy a lens is the weight as a first testing. The takumar that is admired so much from many is believed to be radioactive with lanthanium. I am an astrophysicist and I have a knowledge of these things. Personally I believe that these lenses are not dangerous unless they are broken and you cut your hand with the glass or you have them all the time near your head or your eyes. But these fine lenses now are yellow. Mine has turned yellow. When I look through the camera lens I notice this yellow color. These lenses are only now for BW. Their serving life has finished. One thing is very strange. Why they are so expensive even with scratches on EBAY ?

Well I have a ricoh kr-10, pentax p30, centon k200, cosina exakta HS-10 and zenit 122k in the k-mount. The centon is a crap camera, the same is the ricoh and imagine that ricoh is the most advanced technologically. The centon lense 28-70 is just acceptable compared to the pentax and ricoh lenses and the russian lense helios 44k-4. These cameras mirror the technological skill of the chinese.When you touch them you feel you handle a japanese camera but it is crap. You never know when the shutter will fire and in what speed. The b-setting sometimes works sometimes fires as 1/125. The camera sometimes turn on and sometimes is turned off by herself. Well I believe that of these cameras the most reliable and easily available new is the russian zenit122k. If I had to shoot a wedding I will pick up this camera because it is MECHANICAL and forget about ricoh and centon and all these. The best camera in k-mount is the pentax k1000 and the early cosina clones which are mechanical, cheap and reach the speed of 1/2000. I like the cosina because it meters the light without stopping down the lens. That is a really serious advantage over the zenit. The zenit has a very good lens zeiss biotar copy that cannot be beaten by ricoh lenses and centon recycled glass lenses. It is simple. The only drawback is tha the zenit cannot run faster than 1/500 and has low flash sync speed. But who cares. I have used the 1/1000 2 times in my life and I have never used the 1/2000 in the cosina.

Well I have pentax smc 55mm f/1.8 , pentacon 50mm f/1.8 , Helios 58mm f/2.0 Jupiter 9 85mm f/2.0 uncoated, zeiss 135mm f/3.5 tokina 28mm f/2.8

pentacon 29mm f/2.8. The best lens of all these is the Jupiter 9 with a huge difference. I bought it new for 5000 drs = 15 euro in 1992. Second comes the pentacon 50mm , third with a little distance is pentax smc and helios zenit lense. When stopped down at f/11 the russian lense is much better than the pentax at the same aperture. Pentax is better at f/5.6.

Zeiss is very good also, has the same quality with the pentacon and the last is the tokina which has killing resolution at f/11.

Imagine that my jupiter 9 is completely uncoated and outperforms all the other lenses !!!

The other thing I have to tell to Leica fans is that I own a zorki with jupiter3, jupiter8 and Leitz summitar f/2.0 which I bought 10euros, 25pounds and 280 pounds. I cannot see any difference at all between the jupiter3 f/1.5 and the Leitz f/2.0. Same contrast,same quality of colours , same sharpness. This Leitz cost is equal to the money I paid for all the other my lenses and I am thinking of selling it. Well this model 1959 summitar is considered the best leitz lens ever constructed from many leica users and cannot beat jupiter3 which is at least 10 times cheaper.

I believe that the bad comments about the soviet lenses are written by people who have never catch a soviet or a real Leica lens in their hands. That's all !!!