which 200mm one to buy ?

ivanka-xy said:

i just loook at ebay for Minolta MD III 200mm 4.0

how i know which is III ?

names are : tele rokkor-x,celtic,tele rokkor -pe,tele rokkor -qf,mepro

from f3.5 to f4 to f4.5

Click to expand...

Get the last MD version with the Ft numbers in orange. Must be the best coating and certainly near lightest in weight. The main disadvantage of that version is that the helicoid is alu on alu which is less good than the alu on brass of the MC versions. The MDs might also be a little more prone to fungi building. Schneideritis on the alu near the glass element is more an aesthetic than an optical problem.

Images of many Minolta AR mount lens versions: https://addieleman.nl/minolta/minolta-other-lenses.htm

Look for the orange Ft numbers. Older versions can have another text on the beauty ring, the rubber on the focusing ring differs, the marking you adjust aperture and focus to, can be a dot or diamond shape where the last version has a line.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
No photographer's gear list is complete without the printer mentioned !

fferreres said:

Voigtlander 180 Apo would be the hipster lens to have. The Nikkon AI-s is very good. I like a lens that does not beat any record m, the slow Topcor 200/5.6. I find it to be a lens I like shooting 200mm. The best 200mm I have is the VS zoom 100-300 that excels from 100 to 200mm.

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I don't know about ' hipster', but the Voigtlander 180 is just what you'd expect from a Voigtlander APO. I have found the Nikon AI 200 to be a disappointment.

friend tell me that she have once Jupiter-21M 200mm F4 and was great lens

but her hubby buy her af 200mm so she sell it

is this lens can compare with minolta or nikon ais ?

Hi,

One almost never sees the Topcor 200/5.6. On f5.6 lenses, I've tried the Takumar 200/5.6 and the Konica 200/5.6, of which the former is IMO the better lens. What attracts you to the Topcor over others?

Thx, Rod

ivanka-xy said:

friend tell me that she have once Jupiter-21M 200mm F4 and was great lens

but her hubby buy her af 200mm so she sell it

is this lens can compare with minolta or nikon ais ?

Click to expand...

My copy of Jupiter 21M is rather sharp with good contrast, better than average color aberration corrections, neutral bokeh with slight cat eyes shape of circular highlights toward edges but very good sphere-chromatic aberration correction. Its coatings don't cope well with the backlight, but it can flare nicely with a diffuse loss of contrast.

On the negative side - it is very big and heavy, not as huge as my preferred Sonnar MC 200/2.8, but I doubt you'd take it often for a walk.

Optically good, probably prone to sample variation, built like a tank - literally, mechanically my copy is fine, but you might expect some choking in the focus throw if the grease is old and dry. Oil on the blades is also usual suspect with these Soviet-era lenses.

Here is one image that I took today for some other project of Jupiter 21M at f/4 with a focus are crop and CA reference crop (mainly LoCA). The next image is from my copy of the Contax Zeiss Tele-Tessar 200/4 C/Y.

("My copy" is in bold because, in my experience, lens condition and sample variation can have a significant impact on the resulting image, and thus they do not represent the rendering qualities of the lens model in general. None of the legacy lenses that are older than 5-10 years can speak for the whole model line IMHO.)







Cheers,

Viktor

--

Rod McD said:

Hi,

What attracts you to the Topcor over others?

Click to expand...

How the images look and using it to take pictures. They just look to my taste. I have many other 200mm. The Dynarex isn’t also wow in terms of distortion, Contrast at high frequency and evenness across the image plane. But I also like the rendering a lot. The Rollei Zeiss Tele Tessar is nice, the MD is nice, my Canon is nice, the R Topcor 200/4 is nice...even the Telemegor is quite nice (very bulky though), and so on with many others. It’s just that when I use the Topcor, I enjoy taking pictures a lot more, and then I almost always like the pictures. It is also very “sharpening friendly”. I think it’s not often discussed...I see some lenses produce images that look great when a bit of deconvolution is used. And some others don’t. In this regard, OLDER lenses are so much better, because mostly on the 70s many lenses got redesigned so tangential could be very weak while optimizing contrast in axial lines. You see this departure very easily with Contarex vs C/Y MTF. The older lenses have a smooth declining contrast towards edges across both lines. The new ones are the opposite: one holds high contrast and another goes down. I don’t know enough to characterize this, but my hypothesis is that the older lenses lower resolution but remain more circular, while features on newer lenses retina more contrast but are more blurry in on direction...which makes sharpening make these into lines/curves instead of proper sharper points.

I like the rendering a lot. The purpling of the clothes drives me a bit mad.

Rod McD said:

Hi,

I've tried a number of 200mm lenses on APSC - so not FF - and have been a bit disappointed. I still own the FD and MD 200/4s , and the Konica and Takumar 200/5.6's. It's not that they aren't sharp. It's that the levels of PF and CAs are too high for my liking wide open and for several apertures stopped down. Yes one can largely remove lateral color-fringing in PP, but it is not always an ideal fix, and that still leaves axial CAs..... Flare management is a mixed bag too.

It seems to me that film era 135mm and 200mm were two FLs that were too short to get ED glass and are too long in the digital era to do well without it. I've resorted to my modern zooms for these FLs - there aren't any significant PF and CA issues and flare resistance is also significantly better. Maybe I'm getting old..... I'm not AF dependent at all, but I do find that AF is quicker than I am, and OIS is certainly also useful as light falls.

If you can afford a native zoom that covers 200mm, I'd weigh up the pros and cons with adapted glass very carefully.

Cheers,

Rod

Click to expand...

The Canon FD 80-200mm f/4 L has a fluorite element (one of the first). Nice lens by any standard, I think, but not as flare resistant as newer ones.

fferreres said:

I like the rendering a lot. The purpling of the clothes drives me a bit mad.

Click to expand...

Well, there is a chance in the future...

Mexican solves yet another ancient optics problem!

For now, it is worth noticing that usually slower lenses with lower contrast and no or single coating, do have lower color aberration problems. (It is optically (among other) related to the correction of the secondary spectrum that becomes more intense with the higher contrast).

If you want it all - speed, high micro-contrast, high resolution, and low chromatic aberrations, the catch is hidden in the size, weight, and cost.

Bellow is already mentioned old Elmar 9 cm (very small), followed by Sony Zeiss Planar 85/1.4 ZA (for A-mount) (still rather compact but much bigger than Elmar and finally Zeiss Otus 85/1.4 wide open, a huge piece of optical (almost) perfection.

Of course, if you stop Planar 85 to f/4, it will be clean as Elmar with much higher contrast and sharpness, but for a clean f/1.4 image, even Otus is only close.







For the portrait lens, I'd rather go with the low contrast than with the rainbow aberrations. Actually, low contrast lenses allow more moody post-processing, similar to S-Log gamma in video production. It is easier to create a LUT evoking a cinematic look. (At least for me)


Elmar 9cm f/4

I am often looking for portrait lenses with a very specific rendering and most of them are soft in a trade, but the idea is not to be too descriptive, rather moody and emotional. This piece of plastic (doll) doesn't have any emotions to share, still, using the bottom of the coke bottle can bring a more intriguing image than mighty Otus IMHO.


Meopta Stigmar XX 75/1.1

But when a client call, it's Otus or another newbie to be packed no artistic heroism there.

I went way out of the topic, but the point is, that only very expensive (and usually big and heavy lenses) can be fast, sharp, and well color aberration-corrected wide open. In the world of 200mm, I have only Canon EF 200 f/2 L IS that comes close, but even that Jupiter 21M is a peanut in size comparison, and my back is totally happy with the little purple blows.

Cheers,

Viktor

--

verybiglebowski said:

fferreres said:

I like the rendering a lot. The purpling of the clothes drives me a bit mad.

Click to expand...

Well, there is a chance in the future...

Mexican solves yet another ancient optics problem!

For now, it is worth noticing that usually slower lenses with lower contrast and no or single coating, do have lower color aberration problems. (It is optically (among other) related to the correction of the secondary spectrum that becomes more intense with the higher contrast).

Click to expand...

I will look it up. I noticed this myself and so often prefer the older lower contrast high resolution lens if deep neon purple is the alternative. Look at the aplanar. It’s one of the reasons mine Rollei Planar don’t get much use in higher contrast scenes.

It’s nice to see the photo from the Selmas. I’d rather have less DOF and not have that hue shift in the bokeh parts. This may be why I like the images so much more: the are free from these color artifacts except for the LoCA. No purpling to otherwise great scenes.

verybiglebowski said:

If you want it all - speed, high micro-contrast, high resolution, and low chromatic aberrations, the catch is hidden in the size, weight, and cost.

Bellow is already mentioned old Elmar 9 cm (very small), followed by Sony Zeiss Planar 85/1.4 ZA (for A-mount) (still rather compact but much bigger than Elmar and finally Zeiss Otus 85/1.4 wide open, a huge piece of optical (almost) perfection.

Of course, if you stop Planar 85 to f/4, it will be clean as Elmar with much higher contrast and sharpness, but for a clean f/1.4 image, even Otus is only close.

For the portrait lens, I'd rather go with the low contrast than with the rainbow aberrations. Actually, low contrast lenses allow more moody post-processing, similar to S-Log gamma in video production. It is easier to create a LUT evoking a cinematic look. (At least for me)

Elmar 9cm f/4

I am often looking for portrait lenses with a very specific rendering and most of them are soft in a trade, but the idea is not to be too descriptive, rather moody and emotional. This piece of plastic (doll) doesn't have any emotions to share, still, using the bottom of the coke bottle can bring a more intriguing image than mighty Otus IMHO.

Meopta Stigmar XX 75/1.1

But when a client call, it's Otus or another newbie to be packed no artistic heroism there.

I went way out of the topic, but the point is, that only very expensive (and usually big and heavy lenses) can be fast, sharp, and well color aberration-corrected wide open. In the world of 200mm, I have only Canon EF 200 f/2 L IS that comes close, but even that Jupiter 21M is a peanut in size comparison, and my back is totally happy with the little purple blows.

Click to expand...

Does it have strong Purple haze in high contrast areas?

verybiglebowski said:

Cheers,

Viktor

--
http://verybiglobo.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/viktor_viktor/

Click to expand...

fferreres said:

fferreres said:

.

I went way out of the topic, but the point is, that only very expensive (and usually big and heavy lenses) can be fast, sharp, and well color aberration-corrected wide open. In the world of 200mm, I have only Canon EF 200 f/2 L IS that comes close, but even that Jupiter 21M is a peanut in size comparison, and my back is totally happy with the little purple blows.

Click to expand...

Does it have strong Purple haze in high contrast areas

Click to expand...

Which lens you have in mind?

Microprism said:

Rod McD said:

Hi,

I've tried a number of 200mm lenses on APSC - so not FF - and have been a bit disappointed. I still own the FD and MD 200/4s , and the Konica and Takumar 200/5.6's. It's not that they aren't sharp. It's that the levels of PF and CAs are too high for my liking wide open and for several apertures stopped down. Yes one can largely remove lateral color-fringing in PP, but it is not always an ideal fix, and that still leaves axial CAs..... Flare management is a mixed bag too.

It seems to me that film era 135mm and 200mm were two FLs that were too short to get ED glass and are too long in the digital era to do well without it. I've resorted to my modern zooms for these FLs - there aren't any significant PF and CA issues and flare resistance is also significantly better. Maybe I'm getting old..... I'm not AF dependent at all, but I do find that AF is quicker than I am, and OIS is certainly also useful as light falls.

If you can afford a native zoom that covers 200mm, I'd weigh up the pros and cons with adapted glass very carefully.

Cheers,

Rod

Click to expand...

The Canon FD 80-200mm f/4 L has a fluorite element (one of the first). Nice lens by any standard, I think, but not as flare resistant as newer ones.

Click to expand...

I found mine optically very nice, but didn't keep it because of build quality.

ivanka-xy said:

for sony a7r3 cam

to be super sharp ,manual

i used to use pentax smc m 200 f4 ,dream for 200 a*

and i used mushroom smc 300 m* f4

good lenses but sold them when my k3 die in water

any suggestions ?

Click to expand...

I like my 1979 Canon FD 200mm f/4, but I did have three in the shop to choose from, tho it isn't great with backlit subjects...
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/63344576

Note - a GH5 is equivalent to an 80MP FF camera, but just using the centre part of the image...

verybiglebowski said:

fferreres said:

verybiglebowski said:

.

but even that Jupiter 21M is a peanut in size comparison, and my back is totally happy with the little purple blows.

Click to expand...

Does it have strong Purple haze in high contrast areas

Click to expand...

Which lens you have in mind?

Click to expand...

The Jupiter.

I am not sure about the haze, it has some LoCA but as I wrote earlier, it has less of it than Zeiss Contax Tele-Tessar 200/4.

In the backlight it looses contrast but I didn’t notice purple haze. Purple fringing is there though, but again, not as much as many more expensive alternatives.

If it’s only compact and light as Zeiss...

Sounds tempting. Is there any recommended version?

Consider a New FD 200/4. It’s not 2.8, but it’s sharp, light (440 g), and cheap (about $60).

It’s light enough you can take with you even when you’re not sure you’re going to need it, so when you do need it, you have it with you.

Regards,

Alan

Alan WF said:

Consider a New FD 200/4. It’s not 2.8, but it’s sharp, light (440 g), and cheap (about $60).

It’s light enough you can take with you even when you’re not sure you’re going to need it, so when you do need it, you have it with you.

Regards,

Alan

Click to expand...

The Canon 200/4.0 New FD is excellent, but many of them have an issue in the focusing mechanism. Better to try it before buying, or be sure that you can send it back if defective.

wow nice pictures thanks for them

i now even more like jupiter

but on end will get md 200 and jupiter and see if i'm lucky & get good lens

so tamron 90 macro for normal and macro pics

200 mm for stand-of kind pics of not rly shy animals

next will be long "away" lens for shy animals

question are these new cheap canon lenses can be used on sony cam ?

like canon rf 800mm ?

or is there similar longer lens but cheap in 500mm + range ?



thanks for advices and pics

p.s. is it possible to use some of these cheaper telescopes with t2 adapter

to get sharp images ?

Hi fferreres,

Thx. You clearly know a lot more about lens design than me, but I guess the answer is to use one. I keep seeing the Topcor 200/5.6 reviewed positively, yet we rarely see Topcor lenses for sale here in Australia. To me, the main problem with older 200mm lenses is not that they lack sharpness but that many produce relatively strong levels of CAs - sometimes they fix well, sometimes they don't.

Cheers, Rod