Sharpest Manual lens for 35mm

[nsurit]

My assumption is that you are planning to always use a tripod, as the sharpness of the image hand held will be a function of how steady you can hold the camera. Size and weight of the lens will affect steadiness if not tripod mounted. Looking at the Olympus choices the 28mm f2.8 Zuiko is 6 oz, while the 50mm f2 is almost twice that at 11.3 oz. The two, regardless of sharpness would not handle the same handheld and we probably shouldn't be including the 50mm f2 Macro as it is easily a $500 plus lens.

 

[MattKing]

....."110 Kodachrome slides my Dad shot".....
I did not realize there were 110 slides.
I am not exactly a life-long photographer, so there are A LOT of things "I Did Not Realize".......but 110 slides surprise me for some reason.

Not only 110 slides, but beautiful little 110 "Pocket" Carousel projectors.
Kodak also offered a service where they would dupe 35mm slides on to the 110 slide duping material. People like travelling salespeople could reduce the size of what they needed for their presentations.
I have two of the projectors and a few pocket 110 trays. I don't know whether the projectors will still function - they are on the incredibly long list of things to go through to wrestle the photographic records I have inherited (prints/negatives, slides+++++, regular 8, super 8 and a couple (I think) 16mm movies).
By the way, you could also get your 110 slides mounted into regular 2"x2" mounts, or you could get "adapter" mounts that the 110 mounts slid into for the purpose of projecting them in a 35mm slide projector. The resulting projected images were pretty tiny though unless you had something special in the way of a projection lens.
Getting (sort of) back to the subject at hand, I expect one of the reasons that I sold a lot of 35mm film and cameras in the late 1970s - in a department store camera department (among others) at that - was the availability of fast, high quality Kodachrome processing and Kodachrome film sold with Kodak processing included.
If you dropped your Kodachrome at our store on a weekday morning, the developed and mounted slide film (or developed movie film) would be back in our store for customer pickup the next afternoon - at no extra charge to the customer. Any Kodak dealer was entitled to participate in the pick-up and delivery program. There were a lot of them throughout Western Canada.
Or you could mail the film in, it would be developed on the day it was received and mailed back the day after. During busy times, the North Vancouver Kodak lab ran processing runs 24 hours per day. A huge percentage of the non-movie film was 35mm.
With that volume, I got to see the results from a lot of customers' 35mm work.

 

[Craig]

I sold a lot of 35mm film and cameras in the late 1970s - in a department store camera department

Would that have been Woodwards?

 

[MattKing]

Would that have been Woodwards?

Simpsons Sears/Sears.
May it RIP.

 

[Craig]

I can't ever remember a Sears in Calgary having a camera department. I can remember Woodwards, Eatons and The Bay' camera departments though. I bought a Nikon F3 motordrive at The Bay!

 

[Christiaan Phleger]

As to 110 I was but a kid when they were newer; had one or two but as a kid found the 126 format better all around; easier handling film, more available and cheaper.

I mostly more recall the angst of that medium when I was a teen lab tech at one of those 59 minute labs (before the chemistry came pre-packaged! Ha).
I always dreaded the 110 and Disc 'rolls' since they were so time intensive making the 59 min deadline was a chore. For 110 it was a separate light cassette and I think another leader card. For Disc it was another whole tank assembly that sat on the main roller c-41 machine. If you did just one (1) disc roll you were guaranteed an extra 20-25 min to break that down and clean as part of closing. SUCKED.

Which leads me to a point; 110 was a good product idea (as evidenced by the popularity of compact and phone digital cameras) that had just slightly poor timing. If they had the film improvements (which were on the way) and perhaps a better design the very popular compact Point and Shoot era of the 1990's/early 2000's would have been dominated by 110. Instead APS was the too late to the party solution; its tardiness to the photography party was caused by the industry resistance to playing nice with everyone. 110 wasn't too bad except for the prints; the films really didn't get good enough until 110 was dead.

back to the story...

The lab was located next to a major freeway and the offramp shopping center had a good gas station and a larger supermarket so the lab got heaps of traffic and everyone would be tapping the toes at 54 minutes after filling the car and getting groceries so you'd have a crush of rolls and then really quiet parts; impossible to gauge any single day. Some days me and another two other labbies (hmm quite cute thats another story!) would be sitting around all day and other days one person (usually me) would get slammed; dozens of rolls in a short amount of time could swamp the lab.

 

[CMoore]

Not only 110 slides, but beautiful little 110 "Pocket" Carousel projectors.
Kodak also offered a service where they would dupe 35mm slides on to the 110 slide duping material. People like travelling salespeople could reduce the size of what they needed for their presentations.
I have two of the projectors and a few pocket 110 trays. I don't know whether the projectors will still function - they are on the incredibly long list of things to go through to wrestle the photographic records I have inherited (prints/negatives, slides+++++, regular 8, super 8 and a couple (I think) 16mm movies).
By the way, you could also get your 110 slides mounted into regular 2"x2" mounts, or you could get "adapter" mounts that the 110 mounts slid into for the purpose of projecting them in a 35mm slide projector. The resulting projected images were pretty tiny though unless you had something special in the way of a projection lens.
Getting (sort of) back to the subject at hand, I expect one of the reasons that I sold a lot of 35mm film and cameras in the late 1970s - in a department store camera department (among others) at that - was the availability of fast, high quality Kodachrome processing and Kodachrome film sold with Kodak processing included.
If you dropped your Kodachrome at our store on a weekday morning, the developed and mounted slide film (or developed movie film) would be back in our store for customer pickup the next afternoon - at no extra charge to the customer. Any Kodak dealer was entitled to participate in the pick-up and delivery program. There were a lot of them throughout Western Canada.
Or you could mail the film in, it would be developed on the day it was received and mailed back the day after. During busy times, the North Vancouver Kodak lab ran processing runs 24 hours per day. A huge percentage of the non-movie film was 35mm.
With that volume, I got to see the results from a lot of customers' 35mm work.

Yes.....LOTS of stuff i am not aware of.

 

[Alan Gales]

Yes.....LOTS of stuff i am not aware of.

Don't feel lonesome. I learn things on this forum all the time!