What happened to 135mm?

I have a canon EF 135L, and it's a flawless lens.

mshchem said:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/803339345-USE/nikon_1935_af_dc_nikkor_135mm_f_2d.html

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miha said:

I have a canon EF 135L, and it's a flawless lens.

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Exactly.

And Nikon also did not forget about 135mm in Z mount.

There ARE 135mm lenses. Maybe there are not as many as 50s, but neither are many different 180mm, 200mm, etc... out there.

If you can't find a 135mm lens for your camera, that means that you are using a rejected camera/mount and not a rejected focal length...

runswithsizzers said:

Today, I am content to carry around a 100mm f2.8 for my Konica kit, and I am thinking about getting a 100mm lens for my Pentax MX, as well

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For your K mount MX, you have some interesting options. Pentax made 85, 105, 120, 135, and 150mm lenses. Pentax also made a 75-150mm zoom lens, an interesting range.

Kodachromeguy said:

For your K mount MX, you have some interesting options. Pentax made 85, 105, 120, 135, and 150mm lenses. Pentax also made a 75-150mm zoom lens, an interesting range.

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Thanks for reminding me about the Pentax 75-150mm f4 zoom. I had almost forgotten, I actually have that lens in the M series, given to me by a friend. I should get it out and use it some to see how I like it.

When using my digital APS-C mirrorless cameras, I am a big fan of zooms. But with my SLR film cameras I usually end up carrying a traditional three prime kit. One of the reasons I love to use my Pentax MX is the big bright pentaprism viewfinder. I almost never shoot any lens wide open, but I hate to give up viewfinder brightness when using slower lenses, so maybe that is why I gravitate to primes.

EDIT: Like many film-era zooms, I assumed the Pentax 75-150mm f4 zoom would not be that great, optically, but it actually gets pretty good reviews on the Pentax forum.

I have been taking a lot of pictures using 135 mm lenses - I have fallen in love especially with Ludwig Bertele's 135 mm f/4 Sonnars for my Contax RF.

I was surprised by this effect I watched on an Ektachrome 100D colour slide (a coated Zeiss-Opton lens, wide open, Skylight filter KR1.5) - when it's in the projector, it looks to me almost like a painted picture:



Last spring in Paris, I noticed that even the uncoated 1939 Zeiss Jena Sonnar delivers good contrasts as soon as the sun does not shine into the lens (Fomapan R100 slide film, orange filter, Contax IIIa) :



This is a picture with a late-70s Zeiss Oberkochen Sonnar T* 135 mm f/2.8 (de facto rather an Ernostar), wide open, on a flea market in Paris (Fomapan R100 slide, yellow/green filter, Contax RTS II) :



The mid-60s Rodenstock Rotelar 135 mm f/4 seems to have a very good colour rendering. This was 40 years ago on Ektachrome 400 with a Praktica FX-2, the Edixa version of the Rotelar - sorry I messed it up when I scanned it, the original slide has much stronger and warmer red and green colours:

This seems to be a popular subject. My history with 135s goes back more than half a century. After my standard lens in 1971, my next lens, in 1972, was a 28. In 1973 I finally got a 135. It was a Vivitar f/2.8 (28XXX...) model and it served me very well. My only complaint about it was that it didn't focus very close. I would later trade it toward a 135/3.2 Konica Hexanon, which as has been mentioned, focused down to three feet. If my memory on this is correct, the 135/2.3 Vivitar Series 1 which I later got, also focused down to three feet. These two lenses were useful for portraits. The 135s which got down to five or more feet were not so useful for portraits, especially of young people. I think my favorite 135 must be the Vivitar f/2.8 Closse Focusing. It gets down to 1:2 and has always given me good results. I think I have it in every mount it was made for. It does not seem to have been made in Yashica/Contax mount. Some of my best portraits have been made with it. For outdoor medium distance shooting I prefer a 135 to a 90-105. I think it separates the subject better.

Some of my other favorite 135s: Canon FL 135/2.5, Canon FD 135/2.5, Nikor QC or 'K' 135/2.8, Sigma 135/2.8 Pantel, Konica Hexanon 135/2.5, SMC Pentax 135/3.5.

The 135mm focal length was chosen by Leitz in the 1920s, as the longest lens that could be accurately focused with the camera's rangefinder. The magnification was not too large for a reasonably accurate external viewfinder, and the focal length was a popular one with larger format cameras (so an existing lens design could be used or adapted). Since the Leica became popular, and then dozens of camera makers copied Leitz' design, the focal length became a standard. Remember that so long ago, a telephoto lens of any sort was both rare and expensive, so the 135 became popular.
Decades later, the f.l. went out of fashion, as described above by other posters. Still, that makes no difference at all if you see things that way- use your 135 with pride.
Full disclosure: I had a chrome 135/3.5 Canon RF lens from 1979-2020. It was a high-quality optic that I rarely used on my Leicas... ten years after I divested those, a friend made me an offer on the 135. He's happy now and so am I.