What is your best "sleeper lens"?

What is your best lens that seldom gets recognition but whose image quality is notable?

My small format system is Canon and all but the sleeper lens are OEM.
My sleeper lens is a Sigma 24-60 f/2.8 EX DG. Saving me lots of money from having to buy
the 24-70 f/2.8 ll lens.

19mm

I am stunned by the quality of the images I get from my 19mm f3.5 Vivitar wide angle.

Kowa 50mm 1.9 on and SE SLR body, not interchangeable,

snapguy said:

I am stunned by the quality of the images I get from my 19mm f3.5 Vivitar wide angle.

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Me, too. I haven't used that lens in years! I should get it back out and compare it to the 20mm Minolta AF lens I now use!

My favourite sleeper lens is an old and worn out 50mm/2 AI. It's basically the only reason why I'm still keeping a MF Nikon system running. Otherwise my old weary eyes are thankful for F100 and its great AF. I know the not-very-much-of-a-sleeper 28mm/2.8 AI-S CR would be another good reason for a MF system but my pockets are not deep enough for one. I'm just keeping dreaming on and use my beloved 50mm/2 AI.

180mm Fujinon 80 degree Large Format Lens. Odd that 90mm is one of the most popular 4x5" format lenses, yet 180mm for 8x10 is so rare.

Takumar 100mm f4 Macro.

Pentax 85mm Ultra-Apochromatic Takumar (with fluorite and quartz elements... no 'glass')

Ken

Nikkor 20mmf/2.8

MF - Mamiya RB 37mm fisheye

LF - Schneider APO 120mm

Tamron SP 17mm f3.5 the best rectilinear ultra-wide angle I have ever used, lenses of this type are very difficult to manufacture.

Nikon Series E (their try at cheap consumer glass) 100mm 2.8. Not as awesome as the 105, but you can usually find one for under $100 (the 105 is 3x to 4x that). Beautiful lens for people shooting, very nice focus feel. Bokeh's a little "busy", and it sharpens up around F4 - 5.6, but wide open it's flattering too.

(The series E 28mm I owned was a dog; the 50's good. The 100 is a find if you're on a budget).

Any lens at f/8

mablo said:

My favourite sleeper lens is an old and worn out 50mm/2 AI.

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It is a remarkably good lens. I have two examples, both are very old, one has front element cleaning marks, the other has extensive fungus with a clear centre section. Despite their obvious flaws, they are very impressive. I first came across one in the 1970s, when a friend printed high contrast Tri-X photographs from one. Although the photographs didn't explore the lens's subtlety, it was clear the 50/2 was extremely sharp indeed.

By "sleeper" I assume the OP means lenses that are overlooked and relatively inexpensive. From experience I'd submit:

Yashica ML lenses, especially the 50/2 (pricewise)
Sigma 28/1.8, one of the cheapest ways of getting a bright viewfinder with a wide angle.
Kiron 28/2.8 - I sold mine but build quality and resolution were way beyond the price point.
Olympus 50/1.8
Canon FD 50/1.8 - overlooked for the 1.4 and available for pocket money
Chinon lenses
Helios 50mm

Value lenses that are no longer cheap:
The Tamron SP range
Vivitar 17mm (mirrorless cameras killed the bargains)
Fujinon lenses
Screw mount lenses, especially Pentax
Helios 85mm 1.5

Nikon 50mm f1.8 Series E I got for $6.

Kilfit

I used a Kilfit 90mm 2,8 Macro Kilar with a kiwi adapter on my Hasselblad FCM as well as a 150mm Kilfit lens with LTM to Hasselblad adapter beginning in 1980. It was many years before I could afford a Hasselblad Zeiss lens. These lenses are sharp and versatile. The Macro Kilar focuses from a few inches to infinity. Kilfit included a copy of the factory's quality test for each individual lens along in the packaging. Anybody else have experience with Kilfit lenses? The 300mm Macro-Kilar is awesome with combined helical and rack and pinion focusing.

guangong said:

I used a Kilfit 90mm 2,8 Macro Kilar with a kiwi adapter on my Hasselblad FCM as well as a 150mm Kilfit lens with LTM to Hasselblad adapter beginning in 1980. It was many years before I could afford a Hasselblad Zeiss lens. These lenses are sharp and versatile. The Macro Kilar focuses from a few inches to infinity. Kilfit included a copy of the factory's quality test for each individual lens along in the packaging. Anybody else have experience with Kilfit lenses? The 300mm Macro-Kilar is awesome with combined helical and rack and pinion focusing.

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This is what the Cameraquest web site has to say about Kilfitt:

https://www.cameraquest.com/kilzoom.htm

Pretty impressive.


For me, my Carl Zeiss Jena 50/2.8 on an Exakta VX really surprised me.

MartinCrabtree said:

Nikon 50mm f1.8 Series E I got for $6.

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Mine came on scrap FGs...

Komuranon S 50 & 75 enlarging lenses.

Almost any lens can be your sleeper lens as long as you understand its strong points.

An additional thing that I have learned is that most 50/2 lenses are very good. Pentax, Nikon, Leica, Zeiss, and so on, have all made terrific 50mm f/2 lenses.

The really neat thing about this is that frequently the 50/2 lenses are often pretty inexpensive on the used market, especially when compared against the faster lenses within that same brand.

Sigma 28/2.8 Mini-Wide II.

135/2.8 Nikkor Ai.

Tokina 17/3.5 SL.

Asahi 50mm f/1.4 Super Takumar (8-element)

Once used it on a Pentax Spotmatic body as a backup to my Nikon camera. Surprised to discovered that it performed better than my 50mm f/1.4 Nikon lens. The 8-element Takumar has quite a reputation so it probably cannot be called a "sleeper." However, the 50mm f/1.4 Fujinon lens is a low-cost great performer that is not as well known.

https://flic.kr/p/8UaHwZ

If the 19mm Vivitar lens referred to is an f/3.8 rather than 3.5 then I have one too. The f/3.8 lens was sold under other names too. I think I wrote about the f/3.8 lens along with the 20/3.8 Vivitar Fixed Mount and the older 21/3.8 Vivitar T4 in CameraShopper. Listing all of the oddball lenses I have found to be good would take up many pages. I'll mention a few. In 1976 Minolta redesigned its 35mm f/2.8. The new lens had 5 elements in 5 groups. Toward the later years Minolta started making Celtic lenses which were nearly identical to the Rokkors of the same period. The 35/2.8 MD Celtic is very sharp. I must have three or four of them. Amateurs did not often have both a 28 and a 35 so most went for a 28 for a more wide angle effect. This is why more of the 28s show up. The early Vivitar 28/2 Fixed Mount lens (22XXX...) is very sharp but has a flaw. Nearly every one found has oil on its aperture blades. This causes them to sell for very little. With a little service they can be brought back to life. The 40/1.8 Konica Hexanon was a budget lens sold with certain models as a standard lens. The 40mm focal length isn't for everyone but the lens is very sharp as well as being small and light. Many have been put in front of compact digital cameras. The very light (in weight) 35-70 3.5-4.8 Vivitar kit lens sold with the Cosina-made SLRs is actually a very decent performer if closed down even a little. I don't recommend it for available light shooting but outside in good light it's surprisingly good. The 55mm f/2 Super-Multi-Coated-Takumar and SMC Pentax lenses (M42 and K mount respectively) were Pentax's budget standard lenses before the smaller M lenses were introduced. I have looked at them every which way and as far as I can tell they are the same as their 55mm f/1.8 counterparts. They are just excellent. One of these is on an overhauled Pentax KM. I will soon be transferring it to a just overhauled Pentax MX as soon as the MX gets here. Soligor sold a C/D series 35-70/2.5-3.5 zoom with a close focusing feature. It's an excellent general purpose lens and the wide f/2.5 speed at the 35 end makes focusing and shooting in low light easy. It is sometimes found under the Access name for almost nothing. It's a gem. I'll end this list with a real oddball. It's a 135/2.8 usually found with the Promaster name. It goes down to 1:5. It doesn't have the second helicoid up front (that's a different model). It just has a slightly longer helicoid. What do I use it on? Usually a Pentax K-x DSLR. On that camera it works like a 200mm f/2.8 but with close focusing. If I want to make the right settings I can get the camera's built-in image stabilization to work with it. I am surprised it's so good. Isn't collecting and using old lenses fun?

Vivitar 28mm f/2.8 lens with TX mount

I bought this inexpensive lens buy accident and was surprised that it performed better than my higher priced 28mm f/2.8 Nikon and 28mm f/3.5 Takumar lenses.

https://flic.kr/p/9e2eh6

Nikon 75-150mm Series E Zoom f/3.5 AIS

This low-cost lens produces great images. Liked it so much that I bought a second as a backup. I use this manual focus lens when I do not need to carry my larger and heavier 80-200mm f/2.8 auto focus Nikon.

https://flic.kr/p/8XERAb