robert_hayden

<p>Update: I now have a Tamron Adaptamatic mount for the Fujica AZ-1 and am enjoying full aperture metering with the Tamron 28-200.</p>

<p>I am not an expert here but there are some other options in addition to the lenses made by Fuji. For example, I have the original Tokina 28-80 f/4 zoom in the Fuji full aperture metering M-42 mount. There is potential for conflict in using this on non-Fuji bodies though I have not had problems with mine. There were also Fuji M42 open aperture metering mounts for either Tamron Adaptall or Vivitar (Tokina) TX -- maybe both. </p>

<p>A late addition for anyone who wanders by...</p>

<p>The answer to the original question is that no body can give full aperture metering without some way of communicating the lens opening to the body. This is not a part of single-pin M42. The Chinon's and family have very fast meters that really read AFTER the lens stops down for the actual exposure so it LOOKS like full-aperture metering. I have used them for years and think they are great but the shutter throw is long and stiff (which I do not mind at all). The Spotmatic F and ES had additional links on the screw mount. Most conspicuous is a square lug that points from the lens toward the body just inside the threads. There is also a tab sticking out of the back of the lens from an arc-shaped slot just inside the threads. It moves when the aperture ring moves. If you don't have these you will not have full-aperture reading on an ES or F. So I think the Chinons are about the only game in town and they even offer auto exposure. Indeed, I would use that, as in my experience the autoexposure is often much more accurate than the meter reading in the viewfinder.</p>

<p>I used this c.1970 for little theatre productions. It was the fastest thing around. I recall shooting it at ASA 5000 but I don't remember what I used to develop it. I believe it was intended for recording oscilliscope traces so there may not have been much interest in having the results look pretty;-) I did not have priority seating so I had to use a 400mm f/6.3 lens propped up on my knees to zero in on individual performers. I think it used a strange base that was not entirely clear. It's main use was to capture things you could not get otherwise and it did that well in its day. But image quality was not up to Anscochrome 500, it's color counterpart;-) There were articles in the photo magazines of that era about using this stuff (and 2475) which you might be able to track down. With digital cameras offering speeds around 51,200 in color this seems obsolete for picture taking. If you want weird grain effects you could experiment -- at random as who else knows what weird effects would appeal to you;-) </p>

<p>First let me thank the person who contacted Keppler and posted his response. It certainly matches my sense of some sort of corporate infighting.<br>

I lived through this and my memory differs from some other posts. I would not have been reading either before 1955 and not subscribing until some years later. It is true that Pop was generally about pictures and Modern about equipment. However, it was Pop that published the VERY thorough camera tests in which they often tested multiple lenses from the manufacturer and stripped the camera down and commented on what they found inside. The price was that not much stuff got tested. I also seem to recall a lot more darkroom stuff in Pop than Modern in the early days.<br>

I remember receiving my last issue of Modern with a page announcing they were folding and would fill out unfinished subscriptions with Pop. No explanation of why. Then Pop went on as usual for a number of issues after which it seemed Keppler and half the staff of Modern took over. Very odd if Modern was perceived as the weaker publication, or those guys were not bringing in revenues.<br>

Another difference between the two was that Modern had very strict standards for advertisers who had to agree to certain business practices to run an ad. There was even an appeal process through Modern. This led to far fewer ads in Modern. However, I thought twice about ordering from anyone who advertised ONLY in Pop. That factor may have allowed Modern to charge higher ad rates. These policies were initially continued in Pop after Keppler arrived there but have since fallen by the wayside and some questionable fellows are back in the ads section. Maybe B&H is not willing to spend much money to be in that company;-)<br>

For lens tests Modern had minimum standards that had to be met to even get a review. I do not know if that was true at Pop but Pop rarely tested anything but primes from the major manufacturers. Modern tested a variety of Vivitar, Soligor, Tamron, Tokina, Sigma, Cambron, etc. lenses. <br>

This was before my time but I also believe that the objective tests published in Modern had a big role in making the fortune of the Japanese photography industry. I am old enough to remember when Made in Japan was held in lower esteem than Made in China is today. Keppler certainly had all kinds of contacts in Japan and was given very high honors by the industry there.<br>

The theory that the demise of Modern was caused by the subscription practices of Pop seems strange. </p>

<p>In the beginning you would focus and compose with the lens wide open. When you were ready to take a picture, you stopped the lens down manually. Preset and T-mount and older lenses are like that. The T-mount is interchangeable. It was invented by Tamron but lenses and mounts were made by many different companies. Then came T-4 that automatically stopped the lens down to what you set when you pressed the shutter release. It also was interchangeable but made only by Tokina and imported to the US only by Vivitar and Soligor. Then came TX, that allowed for various other forms of automation. These were also made only by Tokina and imported to the US only by Vivitar. While the T-4s from Soligor and Vivitar tested about the same (good to very good resolution, OK contrast for wides, not much contrast for teles) in Modern Photography, for their other lenses Vivitar had much higher standards than Soligor. Many Vivitars tested almost all Excellents which many camera manufacturer lenses did not.<br>

You are right that there was a lot of rebadging. The 21mm T-4 lens made by Tokina was not only sold by Vivitar and Soligor but also made in a fixed mount for Ricoh under their name. However, Vivitar had about a dozen suppliers in the T-4/TX era and there were many Japanese lens manufacturers who were NOT Vivitar suppliers, so generally speaking there is no telling who made the various 400mm f/6.3 and other lenses that were imported. The Astranar and Spiratone were very close in specs and performance but not in weight or length, though both were smaller and lighter than most such lenses. Vivitar did code the manufacturer into the serial number but that was unusual. Spiratone usually identified the lenses they sold made by Sun and those tended to be big and heavy but good for the time. Another complication is that Japanese manufacturers are much more likely to license lens designs from one another. The Spiratone and Astranar may well have been implementations of the same design by different manufacturers, possibly licensed from a third manufacturer!</p>

<p>From all I can tell looking at the photo that could even be a preset or T-mount;-( Soligor was just an importer. The Tokina T-4 lenses were just one line they imported. I believe many of the lenses for Miranda cameras carried the Soligor brand. Here is another Soligor 400mm f/6.3<br>

http://cgi.ebay.com/Minolta-Mt-Soligor-400mm-f6-3-Lens-w-Hood-XD-X-700-XK-/170499128373?cmd=ViewItem&pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item27b28a3c35<br>

that looks like a T-mount to me. The way I console myself about these could be online auction bargains is that if the seller does not know if it has a T-4 mount they probably do not know if it has fungus or a sticky iris either;-) At 400mm you will probably be on a tripod anyway and workinmg very deliberately. So I use a preset Tele-Astranar which cost $50 new and passed Modern Tests which few Soligors did. The similar Spiratone preset was also a fine lens.<br>

http://cgi.ebay.com/M42-SPIRATONE-400MM-F6-3-LENS-M42-PENTAX-MAMIYA-YASHICA-/390208639293?cmd=ViewItem&pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item5ada3f513d</p>

<p>Is there any particular reason to think this IS a T-4? The T-4 lenses were a sideline for Soligor even when made, with fixed mount lenses before, during and after the T-4 era, to say nothing of stuff branded as Soligor overseas. I would say that unless there is some reason to think this is a T-4 lens then probably it is not. As you probably know the Vivitar T-4/TX lenses have serial numbers starting with 37 which helps to narrow things down with a seller who knows nothing about photo gear. However, there were also non-T-4/TX Vivitars starting with 37;-( I don't know how bad the photo is but a dead giveaway visually is the locking tab shown here<br>

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320535624735&ssPageName=STRK:MESOX:IT</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I am old enough to remember when most of these lenses were tested in the photography magazines of their day. Here are some test results on the Vivitar T-4s done by <em>Camera 35</em> and reprinted in an ad in <em>Modern Photography's </em> October 1969 issue. To save space I'll just give the results wide open and at the optimal f/stop. There were only resolution figures given but in all cases the lenses showed good contrast by the time they were stopped down to optimal resolution. Numbers are center (edge)<br>

28 f/2.8 40 (28): f/5.6 & 8: 56(40)<br>

35 f/2.8 56 (34): f/5.6 & 8: 80 (56)<br>

135 f/2.8 40 (28): f/8 56 (40)<br>

200 f/3.5 48 (34): f/11 56 (48)<br>

300 f/5.5 40 (34): f/11 48 (40)<br>

These are pretty decent with the 35mm lens outstanding. Lenses were about $120, mounts $10, and the test results were really amazing for those prices at that time. A 135 f/3.5 is listed as being in the lineup but was not tested (or the test results were not included in the ad;-) The T-4 and TX lenses generally did not focus as closely as the corresponding fixed mount lenses, while those did not usually focus as closely as Tamrons of the TX era. There were some earlier Tamrons in Adaptamatic mount that worked on Exaktas (which the Adaptall mounts did not). T-4/TX certainly spans the widest range of camara makes and eras. However, I think Spiratone sold a 300mm f/4 (more like f/4.5 really but faster and bigger than most of the competition) in YS mount that gave auto-aperture on Exaktas. I can confirm that TX lenses I've tried work with a T-4 mount on an Exakta. The 35-105 wide angle to telephoto is a gas on a VX-500.</p>

 

<p>I agree with the comments about the pros and cons of this lens which I've owned since it came out. I believe the other 90mm Vivitar referenced was an f/2.8, not f/2.5. And I don't think the Tamron is the same design; the number of elements and groups does not match up, for example. In any case no other lens ever racked up such high resolution figures in _Modern Photography_. Wide open it was a mere 98 lines/mm, center and edge, at 1:9.7 magnification. (Why that odd number? I believe this was based on a design for a copy machine lens, and so optimized for about 1:10 rather than the approximate 1:50 for a regular lens and 1:2 or 1:1 for a macro.) For reference, the highest figure for the Nikon 1.4 normal lens of that era was 70 lines/mm at f/8 and 1:50. Test results for the f/2.5 and the f/2.8 were about on a par with the Nikon normal lens at 1:50. At 1:1 and 1:2 the f/2.5 was much superior to the f/2.8. The lens is at its best on a copy stand with carefully controlled lighting that does not cause flare. BTW, if you look this up in one of _Modern's_ Photo Buying Guide Annuals the results for the two lenses are somewhat garbled together.</p>

<p>Hi folks. I am no expert but I own three of these Chinon-made SLRs and am old enough to have been around when they came out and read the reviews;-) The Chinon Memotron CE II, the Alpa Si200, and the GAF LE-S/2 are what I have. I bought the first two new. I think Sears Roebuck sold this under another name as well, and that there was an Argus version (CR-3E?). These are big, heavy cameras. The Chinon CE-3 was a later, smaller version.<br /> <br /> With all, you focus and compose wide open. The shutter release is stiff with a long but smooth travel. As you press it down the lens stops down, the meter turns on, and a needle shows the automatically-set shutter speed. You can press it slowly to check that speed in marginal lighting, or you can just push it down hard and take your picture with what appears to be open-aperture metering. You also have auto-exposure with any manual or preset lens and virtually anything you can attach to the camera. There was talk at the time that the technology may have been developed by Cosina. Similar technology was used in the Minolta X-700 and some Nikons.<br /> <br /> The Chinons came with Chinon-brand lenses and the Alpas with Alpa brand lenses. They appear to be the same lenses. I do not believe that Chinon actually made any lenses and that most of these were made by Tomioka. There were two f/1.7 normal lenses -- one focused much closer than the other -- and a 1.4. The close-focusing one was like the Meyer 1.8 on Practicas or many "macro" zooms in that they just extended the range, they did no special correction for good results close up as a true macro lens would. Tomioka made an f/1.2 as well though I know not under what brands. Early lenses carried both the Chinon and Tomioka labels, later ones just the Chinon brand. Modern Photography's tests called it a Tomioka lens. They tested both the 1.4 and the 1.7 macro. Both passed their tests but resolution and contrast were not up to normal lenses from the major brands of the time. Tomioka made most of the Yashica lenses and later the "Zeiss" lenses for Contax as well as many other brands.<br /> <br /> The basic camera mechanism is pretty rugged. There is an internal eyepiece blind. You operate it by a little lever. It is pretty stiff and the lever tends to break off. The film rewind mechanism is fairly delicate though my two failures involved equipment abuse;-) The meter readout in the viewfinder is often inaccurate or non-functional but the camera still seems to set the proper exposure. One review at the time took the camera apart and complained about a huge number of solder joints inside. I have never had an electrical problem except for the meter needle. It uses the Copal Square shutter. Top speed is 1/2000, unusual for that shutter or for the time the camera was new.<br /> <br /> I think the cameras are great of you have M42 gear to attach to them. The lenses are nothing special as far as I can see.</p>