Rokkor-X 200/2.8 lens

Greetings
Does anyone own or has used this lens. I am thinking about making a purchase and was curious if anyone has any experience

Thanks, Jorge

It is fantastic!

One of the stellar Rokkors.

Simply a magnificence, world class optic.

Fred

Does $300.00 US seem in the ballpark?

If I had it, I would pay that.
I paid close to $1000 for mine brand new, in the '80's, and it was hard to get.

Fred

I don't know Minolta gear well, but KEH.com has the 200mm f3.5 Rokkor X MC for $59. I know its a different lens, but what a difference half a stop makes in price.

Dead Link Removed. Short of it: it's good but not as good as later telephoto lenses with apochromatic glass.

mudman said:

I don't know Minolta gear well, but KEH.com has the 200mm f3.5 Rokkor X MC for $59. I know its a different lens, but what a difference half a stop makes in price.

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Volkswagon makes the Beatle which has 4 seats and needs only 1 key to operate. $18K. They also make the Bugatti Veyron which has 2 seats and requires 2 keys to run. The Bugatti costs $2 million dollars. Big differance for 2 less seats or 1 more key. There MUST be some other difference.

psvensson said:

Dead Link Removed. Short of it: it's good but not as good as later telephoto lenses with apochromatic glass.

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Possibly true. BUT!

Although I like and respect the well meaning folk who contribute a great service at Rokkor Files, one has to take with a large dollop of salt anyone whose conclusions which are based on tests run with a color negative film with the lightest plastic camera body available mounted on a tripod so light they admit that they had to add a weighted bag to even get useful results.

What happened to the addage,"The lighter the camera the heavier the tripod"? That lens could weigh twice what the 570 weighs. Minolta made the XK, XKmotor, XD-5, XD-11 for such serious persuits. The 570 is an intentional compromise intended to do most things for most people, whose needs are weekend occasional snapshots. Light tripods do little more than prevent small cameras from crashing to the ground, and delude the person who purchased them into accepting the hype they are sold by.

What does "good" mean? It is at best misleading to test on the least capable type of material available and then scan on a system which by default injects adjustments of its own. (Nearly all scanners do this with Color neg. film, they have to or they would drive the user nuts) I own a Minolta 5400II, which was the most obviously one used and at best any (color neg.) output from it (or most others) must be considered subjective and derivative. Objective is not possible as it comes equipped.

Lens quality is itself subjective and cannot be expressed in numbers and measurements. Lens quality must be determined using materials which do not inject qualities of their own. Color neg. does not fit this criteria. B&W and some chrome films do. You need to make photographs in real light of real subjects and even then "good' is relative to the image that was intended to be there.

Marketing hype does not a great lens (or camera, or tripod) make.

Fred

Hey, we're all staring at the same lens that closes in a couple of days on ebay.

I've got one and it's good and it's heavy...bit of a handfull to use without a tripod. I prefer my trusty MD 135mm f2.8 myself. $300.00 sounds about right for a good one.Oh and the difference in quality to the 3.5 is about as much as the difference in prices indicates......

My only 200 that fast is the 200/2.8 Canon New FD (1st model). I find it to be quite good even if its close focusing limit isn't as good as that of the later IF model. The other fast 200 I have is the 200/3 Vivitar Series 1. I have that lens in Konica AR and M42 mounts. The Series 1 lens focuses to 4 feet, which is even closer than the 200/2.8 IF Canon lens. I have a late model 200/3.5 MC Rokkor with the aperture ring near the lens mount and a later 200/3.5 MC Rokkor-X. Both of these are excellent. It would be nice to try the 200/2.8 MD lens. There are several very nice 180/2.8 Nikkors which would probably sell for less than the MD. The problem with finding some of the more exotix Minolta lenses is that most people using lenses like these had Nikon and Canon cameras. All three versions of the 200/2.8 Canon FD lenses are much more common than the 200/2.8 MD and the 180/2.8 Nikkors are more common than the 2002.8 Canons. If you really want to spend money you can look for a 200/1.8 Canon New FD. Soligor also made a 200/2.8 years ago.

Had one in the early 90's I shot sports with before I went nikon. Good lens wish I had kept it.

I had a Soligor 200mm f2.8 around 25 years back. It was pretty lacking in contrast wide open, although much better by f4 - but if I wanted to use it at f4 or slower, I'd rather not have lugged around such a heavy lens compared to a 200mm f3.5.

The Vivitar 200mm f3.5 is available for a pittance nowadays, and it's a stunningly good lens at least comparable to the Rokkor 200mm f3.5, better than the Nikkor 200mm f4.