Any experience of Petri 1.8/55?

RLangham · Jan 12, 2021

So I bought a completely broken Petri SLR with an M42 Petri lens, f/1.8 55mm. Now, someone had bent the aperture plunger by trying to unscrew it with the aperture linkage locked forward, but I managed to straighten it and make the lens work perfectly. The camera is locked up and I have no interest in fixing it, but this lens seems nice and in great shape. Looking through it on one of my M42 cameras it seems like it would have great bokeh ad background blur at various apertures.

So the odd thing is that the aperture ring moves freely with no click stops in evidence. Is this normal for this lens? If not I'm really thinking it may have been a deliberate modification, as no damage to the aperture ring or the surrounding areas can be seen.

Does anyone have any experience shooting with this lens? What is your opinion of it? And what is your opinion of Petri lenses more generally?

Kino · Jan 12, 2021

Petri lenses can be surprisingly good.

Sounds like you have a model of lens like what would fit the Petriflex 7; it has no click-stops, but that camera has a bayonet mount.

Petri made several discreet lines of lenses; each fitting only certain models. What is the camera and what does the beauty ring on the front of the lens say?

RLangham · Jan 12, 2021

Kino said:
Petri lenses can be surprisingly good.

Sounds like you have a model of lens like what would fit the Petriflex 7; it has no click-stops, but that camera has a bayonet mount.

Petri made several discreet lines of lenses; each fitting only certain models. What is the camera and what does the beauty ring on the front of the lens say?

So it's definitely an automatic M42 lens with a manual switch on it. Rubber diamond grips on the focus ring, diamond milling on the aperture ring. It looks older than the camera, which is an FT1000,. It says "CC Auto" and "Petri 1:1.8 / 55 [serial number] PETRI LENS MADE IN JAPAN."

Paul Howell · Jan 12, 2021

I have the same lens in both Petri Breech and M42 mount, it is a rather nice lens. In their printed sales brochures and user manuals Petri claimed to use "high index flint glass" the CC I think stands for color corrected their version of multicoating. Starting as a telescope maker Petri made pretty good lens, my 300 5.6 is as sharp as any 300 I have. Too bad the bodies were so poorly made. Late in game while others were moving away from M42 Petri changed mounts with the FX. Pretty much the as FT or FTII stopped down metering, lacked the stop down lever over the shutter release. Petri made a limited number of lens, fasted was the 55 1.4, did not make a 100 or 105, and although their catalogs listed a 800 the longest I have seen for sale is the 400. The FX was sold under the K mart label, Focal, maybe others. After Petri left the camera market they sold the name to some in the UK which sold rebranded Cosina K mounts under Petri.

Petri made 3 lens mounts, the breech mount that fit the flex and FT, an EE version of the FT version and 42.

I checked my 55 1.8 in M2, no clicks for the f stop ring. As I recall none of my Petri lens have click stops, need to dig a few out to double check.

Kino · Jan 12, 2021

I have a FT EE with several lenses, A non-functional V6, a Petriflex 7 and a brace of rangefinders by Petri. The older rangefinders are pretty good and some of the older SLRs are good, but the later models are problematic at best.

You have to be careful when buying Petri lenses for Petri cameras as there is at least 2 variants of the breech mount and they are only forward compatible from the older to the newer lens mount.

Petri made several fatal decisions that sunk them;
1. radically re-designing the internal clockworks of the cameras to incorporate a bizarre "drive shaft" style mechanism which is prone to being gummy and easy to get out of sync. (The Petri Penta was the first to use this system I think)

2. Designing a backwards breech lock mount that is clumsy and very restrictive of lens diameter. The 42mm adapter can only accept very skinny barrel lenses; most modern M42 mount lenses won't work on this adapter.

3. Suddenly abandoning this proprietary breech lock mount for the M42 threaded mount just about the time everyone else was abandoning M42 for some form of bayonet mount.

Seems they were constantly making a bad choice at a bad time...

RLangham · Jan 12, 2021

Paul Howell said:
I have the same lens in both Petri Breech and M42 mount, it is a rather nice lens. In their printed sales brochures and user manuals Petri claimed to use "high index flint glass" the CC I think stands for color corrected their version of multicoating.

I think I've seen rather sorry cameras and lenses in the breech mount. I don't mind breech mounts in the abstract, and Canon could have stayed with breech mounts on the FD lenses as far as I'm concerned, rather than radically rengineering a reverse bayonet mount to fit on the same cameras. But the Petri breech mount hardware looked ugly when I saw it... And that makes me think it might be kludgy too.

I checked my 55 1.8 in M2, no clicks for the f stop ring. As I recall none of my Petri lens have click stops, need to dig a few out to double check.

A very weird quality in lenses of this vintage... One of the few things I did not immediately like about this lens.

Paul Howell · Jan 12, 2021

I have a EE, the older FT lens work in manual mode, never tired a EE lens on a FT body, sometime might give it a try. Miranda did the same thing. The later EE and EC lens will not work well on the older mount, the aperture is stuck on F8. Seems to me that Petri was fixed at making inexpensive cameras, bottom feeders, but still the build quality is very poor.

Kino · Jan 12, 2021

Paul Howell said:
I have a EE, the older FT lens work in manual mode, never tired a EE lens on a FT body, sometime might give it a try. Miranda did the same thing. The later EE and EC lens will not work well on the older mount, the aperture is stuck on F8. Seems to me that Petri was fixed at making inexpensive cameras, bottom feeders, but still the build quality is very poor.

I maintain the old rangefinders and initial SLRs were of good quality, but they went downhill quickly...

Paul Howell · Jan 12, 2021

I have a Color, the build quality is quite good, don't have an early SLR, might need to get one.

RLangham · Jan 12, 2021

Paul Howell said:
I have a Color, the build quality is quite good, don't have an early SLR, might need to get one.

Build quality on the FT 1000 does not seem terrible. However, mine was locked up completely until I fiddled with it about twenty minutes ago and forced something funny. Seems to work now but I'm not gonna trust it with good film. So I can't really speak to the quality for better or worse. Lens seems better than alright, probably no Takumar.

Paul Howell · Jan 12, 2021

Take the FT 1000 apart, you might change your mind.

RLangham · Jan 12, 2021

Paul Howell said:
Take the FT 1000 apart, you might change your mind.

No need: I looked through the shutter and the mirror is raising too late. As someone said above, the timing gets off so easily I guess.

flavio81 · Jan 13, 2021

RLangham said:
So I bought a completely broken Petri SLR with an M42 Petri lens, f/1.8 55mm. Now, someone had bent the aperture plunger by trying to unscrew it with the aperture linkage locked forward, but I managed to straighten it and make the lens work perfectly. The camera is locked up and I have no interest in fixing it, but this lens seems nice and in great shape. Looking through it on one of my M42 cameras it seems like it would have great bokeh ad background blur at various apertures.

So the odd thing is that the aperture ring moves freely with no click stops in evidence. Is this normal for this lens? If not I'm really thinking it may have been a deliberate modification, as no damage to the aperture ring or the surrounding areas can be seen.

Does anyone have any experience shooting with this lens? What is your opinion of it? And what is your opinion of Petri lenses more generally?

Petri has horrible build quality but their lenses almost always get good reviews from their users. It's probably a swell lens.

Digger Odell · Jan 13, 2021

flavio81 said:
Petri has horrible build quality but their lenses almost always get good reviews from their users. It's probably a swell lens.

Petri EARLY stuff was pretty darn good, Quality went down hill greatly in the later years. I have a petri 1.9 color corrected super rangefinder, with a 6 element 4.5 cm lens. With a copal mxv shutter and no clicks for aperture. Its a very nice camera.

RLangham · Jan 13, 2021

flavio81 said:
Petri has horrible build quality but their lenses almost always get good reviews from their users. It's probably a swell lens.

I can't wait to see pictures from it. I think it'll live on my DTL 1000.

Paul Howell · Jan 13, 2021

Seems their secret was "high index flint glass." Not sure who made it, as a telescope maker maybe Petri made their own glass, and unsure if any other lens makers used it, my 400 6.3 takes a 72mm filter, so not all that high index, while to 70 to 210 4.5 zoom takes a 58mm which seem high index for a early zoom.

Digger Odell · Jan 13, 2021

Paul Howell said:
Seems their secret was "high index flint glass." Not sure who made it, as a telescope maker maybe Petri made their own glass, and unsure if any other lens makers used it, my 400 6.3 takes a 72mm filter, so not all that high index, while to 70 to 210 4.5 zoom takes a 58mm which seem high index for a early zoom.

I'm pretty sure in this context, high index means how the glass can bend the light rays, not the overall f/ stop. Just FYI

Paul Howell · Jan 13, 2021

Yeah, there is short bit on Wiki, as far as I know Petri was the only maker to make a point of using it.

Flint glass is optical glass that has relatively high refractive index and low Abbe number (high dispersion). Flint glasses are arbitrarily defined as having an Abbe number of 50 to 55 or less. The currently known flint glasses have refractive indices ranging between 1.45 and 2.00. A concave lens of flint glass is commonly combined with a convex lens of crown glass to produce an achromatic doublet lens because of their compensating optical properties, which reduces chromatic aberration (colour defects).

With respect to glass, the term flint derives from the flint nodules found in the chalk deposits of southeast England that were used as a source of high purity silica by George Ravenscroft, c. 1662, to produce a potash lead glass that was the precursor to English lead crystal.

Traditionally, flint glasses were lead glasses containing around 4–60% lead(II) oxide; however, the manufacture and disposal of these glasses were sources of pollution. In many modern flint glasses, lead oxides are replaced with other metal oxides such as titanium dioxide and zirconium dioxide without significantly altering the optical properties of the glass.

flavio81 · Jan 13, 2021

Paul Howell said:
Seems their secret was "high index flint glass." Not sure who made it, as a telescope maker maybe Petri made their own glass, and unsure if any other lens makers used it, my 400 6.3 takes a 72mm filter, so not all that high index, while to 70 to 210 4.5 zoom takes a 58mm which seem high index for a early zoom.

Not really a secret; any manufacurer can use high refraction index* glass, they just buy it from their suppliers. It's just more expensive.

* it really means glass with high refraction index but normal dispersion. Because glass with high refraction index and high dispersion is cheap.

flavio81 · Jan 13, 2021

Paul Howell said:
Yeah, there is short bit on Wiki, as far as I know Petri was the only maker to make a point of using it.

Source? It makes no sense, sorry. All manufacturers use or have used Flint glasses, those are common glasses. And all major manufacturers have used special types of glass, including high refraction index + low dispersion. Even on their normal lenses.

I'm surprised by you making such a statement, you're one of the most knowledgeable people on this forum...

flavio81 · Jan 13, 2021

PS: For example the common Nikkor-S 50/1.4

You can see there are many flint glasses used (common glasses)
And then two glasses of high index and moderate dispersion: LAK8, LAK12, and the "propiertary" glass.

Source: Marco Cavina

RLangham · Jan 13, 2021

flavio81 said:
Source? It makes no sense, sorry. All manufacturers use or have used Flint glasses, those are common glasses. And all major manufacturers have used special types of glass, including high refraction index + low dispersion. Even on their normal lenses.

I'm surprised by you making such a statement, you're one of the most knowledgeable people on this forum...

Perhaps he means the only manufacturer to make a selling point of it.

Paul Howell · Jan 13, 2021

My wording was not so good, but until Flavo81 posted I had no idea how many or how often flint was used, seems that Petri used flint glass as a marketing gimmick. Might be that all elements were flint glass, don't know, there is so little information left concerning Petri. What I last saw years ago was the company continued as a telescope maker, employee owned, don't know if it is still around in any capacity.

RLangham · Jan 13, 2021

Paul Howell said:
My wording was not so good, but until Flavo81 posted I had no idea how many or how often flint was used, seems that Petri used flint glass as a marketing gimmick. Might be that all elements were flint glass, don't know, there is so little information left concerning Petri. What I last saw years ago was the company continued as a telescope maker, employee owned, don't know if it is still around in any capacity.

Almost any achromatic doublet or similar two element construct will have a crown glass element and a flint glass element, and most lenses of any real quality build on the same basic idea, containing groups of glasses with different qualities that compensate for each other's various optical flaws. I don't know that real camera lenses could be made without something like flint glass, and I don't know that real lenses could be made with only flint glass. I could be wrong.

flavio81 · Jan 13, 2021

Paul Howell said:
My wording was not so good, but until Flavo81 posted I had no idea how many or how often flint was used, seems that Petri used flint glass as a marketing gimmick. Might be that all elements were flint glass, don't know, there is so little information left concerning Petri. What I last saw years ago was the company continued as a telescope maker, employee owned, don't know if it is still around in any capacity.

Flint and Crown glass are glass families and most photo lenses use glasses from both families. There are very cheap flint glasses and expensive flint glasses.

As for petri lenses, what i've read on the net is often glowing reviews for the lenses on their RFs and the lenses for their classic (big) SLRs. So they were supposedly good at making lenses, or another good OEM (like Tomioka or Kowa) made them.

Any experience of Petri 1.8/55?

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