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1974 Minolta Rokkor 55 mm f/1.7 Lens

Started Nov 19, 2021 | Photos
B_Gardner
B_Gardner Regular Member • Posts: 185
1974 Minolta Rokkor 55 mm f/1.7 Lens
4

A backordered lens adapter finally arrived in the mail allowing me to try out my 47 year old lens on my 1 year old Canon M6 Mark II to take a picture of my dog Candy.  I am pleased with this picture but welcome feedback.  I'm curious what experienced photographers think of this old lens?

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Sue Anne Rush
Sue Anne Rush Senior Member • Posts: 6,285
Re: 1974 Minolta Rokkor 55 mm f/1.7 Lens
1

Hello...

Very nice photograph of your dog. 

B_Gardner wrote:

A backordered lens adapter finally arrived in the mail allowing me to try out my 47 year old lens on my 1 year old Canon M6 Mark II to take a picture of my dog Candy. I am pleased with this picture but welcome feedback. I'm curious what experienced photographers think of this old lens?

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Sue Anne Rush

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John Crowe
John Crowe Veteran Member • Posts: 3,476
Re: 1974 Minolta Rokkor 55 mm f/1.7 Lens
1

Would be nice to see some examples at f1.7.  Seems like a nice lens.  A wide open aperture is what differentiates all the fast lenses.

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Larry Rexley Senior Member • Posts: 1,238
Re: 1974 Minolta Rokkor 55 mm f/1.7 Lens
1

Nice photo! Very good result for that vintage lens, especially considering it was shot at ISO 1600. I can see the 'warmth' that the Minolta Rokkors have vs the slightly cooler tones of the modern Canon lenses.

How did you process the photo? What aperture was it shot at?

I have a set of Minolta SR-mount lenses. The oldest I have is an MC Rokkor-QF 200mm f3.5 'hills and valleys' lens, which is about the same age as yours and a reasonably good performer. I have some MC Rokkors from the 70s and some MDs from the 80s. See the following Minolta lens calatog:

http://minolta.eazypix.de/lenses/

I believe your lens is older than you mention: the MC Rokkor 55mm 1.7 lenses were made between 1966 and 1970, in a few different versions. After 1970 Minolta went to a newer all-black lens style, and went to the more standard 50mmm focal length.

From my experience, I'd expect that your lens to start sharpening up across the frame at around f2.8, and to give you clean, sharp images around f5.6 - f8.

I had fairly good luck sharpening my vintage Minolta lens photos using Canon DPP 4 against Raw files, but was never able to correct the chromatic aberration very well. IN particular it never did a good job with a Minolta MC Rokkor-X 28mm f2.8.

However, I found that DxO PhotoLab 4 (5 is now out) does an outstanding job with vintage lenses --- using unsharp masking with intensity around 150, Radius 0.75, Threshold 0, and edge offset 50-100 (Edge offset is how much additional sharpness 'intensity' to apply in the edges/corners over the middle of the frame, to sharpen up soft corners).

DxO really shines when correcting the chromatic aberrations of those old lenses. I usually find settings of: Lateral CA enabled, Intensity 180, size 8, Purple fringing enabled works well, but each lens is different and experimenting helps.

DxO allows you to bump up contrast and microcontrast to compensate for the lower contrast of the old lenses, and Deep prime Noise reduction will clean them up and enhance the sharpness, making the photos look very much like they were shot with modern lenses with full lens corrections.

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B_Gardner
OP B_Gardner Regular Member • Posts: 185
Re: 1974 Minolta Rokkor 55 mm f/1.7 Lens
2

Thanks for the feedback and apologies for failing to note the f ratio of that picture. I don't remember what it was set at, but am guessing it was somewhere around f/4 to f/8.

With apologies to Candy (who I woke up from a nap - she's a working dog, you know) to take her picture at f/1.7, here are some indoor and outdoor pictures that I just took, all at f/1.7:

I used DPP to reduce the size of the CR3 files and to save them as JPEGs. Beyond that I brightened the pictures of Candy and the wall chart of the Moon.

Here is a picture of the Rokkor lens on my M6ii. This lens was included as the kit lens on a Minolta SRT-101 that I bought in 1974.

But as Larry noted, the lens could be older than that. I wasn't aware that it had been discontinued but do remember that there were two versions of the lens offered with the camera at that time. I think the other one was an f/1.4, maybe?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minolta_SR-T_101

Sadly, my SRT-101 was mysteriously damaged in the 90's while stored safely in my closet.  I still have mug shots of the usual suspects on my desk in front of me (the kids).

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Sue Anne Rush
Sue Anne Rush Senior Member • Posts: 6,285
Re: 1974 Minolta Rokkor 55 mm f/1.7 Lens
1

Thank you for your dog's name - loads of photographs to remember her.

Sue Anne Rush

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