Your worst lens

flavio81 · Jan 29, 2015

PtJudeRI said:
After reading all this, I dropped $15 on this 43-86 lens to see what all the fuss is about... Ill tell you what... lets turn lomography onto this one.. they'll make a fortune on it!

Remember, there are two version of it, the "bad" version is the pre-AI version, or the black "K" version with serial numbers under 774071. Those are lenses with a 9 element, 7 group design, where the famed Nikon lens design team had spent a special extra effort to decrease the performance of the lens to lomography levels...

The version that follows has 11 elements and 8 groups and opinions on it range from "ok" to very good, but it seems that it suffers from distortion.

PtJudeRI · Jan 29, 2015

Yep, I have the older version... for lo-fi, whacked out images, this one is tough to beat!

RalphLambrecht · Jan 31, 2015

flavio81 said:
Remember, there are two version of it, the "bad" version is the pre-AI version, or the black "K" version with serial numbers under 774071. Those are lenses with a 9 element, 7 group design, where the famed Nikon lens design team had spent a special extra effort to decrease the performance of the lens to lomography levels...

The version that follows has 11 elements and 8 groups and opinions on it range from "ok" to very good, but it seems that it suffers from distortion.

Ken R claims that this is the lens which gave zooms a bad name.

flavio81 · Jan 31, 2015

RalphLambrecht said:
Ken R claims that this is the lens which gave zooms a bad name.

He's not the only one who has made that claim. And it has some truth: This was one of the first (or perhaps the first) affordable standard zoom by a major manufacturer. So thus, it was very popular for a long time and thus the reputation of zoom lenses might have been biased by this very lens.

Dan Fromm · Feb 1, 2015

36-82/2.8 Voigtlaender-Zoomar, anyone?

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Feb 1, 2015

Japanese lenses , nikon , olympus , yashica , canon , all were discusting. If you order a optics shop , make me a bad lens , they cant compete with japan. Even Holga and Pinholes are faraway better.

Dali · Feb 1, 2015

M42 Meyer / Carl Zeiss Jena lenses were mechanically awful. It totally ruins lenses which are optically good. I owned several of them and they all ended up sold or in the trash can.

Dan Fromm · Feb 1, 2015

Mustafa Umut Sarac said:
Japanese lenses , nikon , olympus , yashica , canon , all were discusting. If you order a optics shop , make me a bad lens , they cant compete with japan. Even Holga and Pinholes are faraway better.

Interesting if true. Why do you believe this? How many of these "discusting" lenses have you tested? Please share your test results with us.

Sirius Glass · Feb 1, 2015

Mustafa Umut Sarac said:
Japanese lenses , nikon , olympus , yashica , canon , all were discusting. If you order a optics shop , make me a bad lens , they cant compete with japan. Even Holga and Pinholes are faraway better.

It must be unique to see all the World out of step at once in unison with you. How do you suppose that everyone but you is out of step?

Pioneer · Feb 1, 2015

I notice you left out Pentax and Minolta, Mustafa. That sounds about right.

Dan Fromm · Feb 1, 2015

Pioneer said:
I notice you left out Pentax and Minolta, Mustafa. That sounds about right.

Sorry, Pentax and Minolta lenses are no better than Nikkors or Canons. Mustafa probably forgot to include them in his unusable junk list.

Dali · Feb 1, 2015

Please, don't feed the troll.

eddie · Feb 1, 2015

Dali said:
Please, don't feed the troll.

This isn't the first time you've called him a troll. He's a long time subscriber to the site, and anything but a troll. While I find his opinions about lenses way off the mark, and some of his posts are beyond my comprehension, most would find his contributions interesting (even when not fully understood). Show a little respect.

MartinCrabtree · Feb 1, 2015

While the above may have merit his political postings relegate him as the sole inhabitant of my ignore list.

Dali · Feb 1, 2015

eddie said:
This isn't the first time you've called him a troll. He's a long time subscriber to the site, and anything but a troll. While I find his opinions about lenses way off the mark, and some of his posts are beyond my comprehension, most would find his contributions interesting (even when not fully understood). Show a little respect.

When someone posts to be deliberatly provocative without contributing in any way to the debate and without any substantial argument, I call him a troll. To be more specific to this thread, when someone states that Japanese lenses are crap, I call him a troll (being a long time subscriber or not).

Dan Fromm · Feb 1, 2015

Folks, I'm well acquainted with thread drift. Even though I started this discussion I don't feel that I own it or can control what's posted in it. I intended it to be about lenses that we know from experience aren't the best, not that we don't like because of quasi-religious belief. I'd appreciate it if we could stick to that subject and not slander each other. I'm tempted to call names at times but it really isn't appropriate.

With that in mind, let me tell you about my not-so-beloved 1.75"/2.8 Elcan. It was made for the Vinten F.95 aerial camera, which shoots 6x6 on 70 mm film. The first one I saw belonged to my late friend Charlie Barringer. He'd stuffed it very crudely into the front of his Miniature Speed Graphic. After looking at the images it put on the ground class he concluded that it just covered 2.25" x 3.25". I looked, reached the same conclusion and coveted one.

Not long after that an unlikely string of coincidences brought one to my house. I took it to Woonsocket to have SKGrimes put it on a 2x3 Pacemaker Graphic board. It eventually came back, I put it on my little Speed and took some pictures. It doesn't cover 2x3. It illuminates nominal 6x7, doesn't really cover 6x6 and it has heavy barrel distortion. It isn't that sharp either. The best I can say about it is that it seems to be the shortest lens that will focus to infinity on a 2x3 Pacemaker Speed Graphic and that it is marginally acceptable on nominal 6x6, its intended format. It can't be used on a 6x6 SLR, not enough back focus. If you have the opportunity to buy one, run away.

Sirius Glass · Feb 1, 2015

Dali said:
When someone posts to be deliberatly provocative without contributing in any way to the debate and without any substantial argument, I call him a troll. To be more specific to this thread, when someone states that Japanese lenses are crap, I call him a troll (being a long time subscriber or not).

A troll is a troll is a troll. His reputation more than negates his contributions.

flavio81 · Feb 1, 2015

Dan Fromm said:
36-82/2.8 Voigtlaender-Zoomar, anyone?

But that was an extremely expensive lens, not an affordable one. BTW we found one in a friend's basement not so long ago.

flavio81 · Feb 1, 2015

Japanese cameras and lenses, first Nikon & later Canon, were responsible for the downfall of the german camera industry and this was NOT achieved by selling "bad" lenses.

Pioneer · Feb 2, 2015

So true flavio81.

And this Japanese vs German issue is almost as old as the Contax vs Leica wars. I am starting to have difficulty telling the difference when German companies are having Japanese companies build lenses for them and Japanese companies are having China and Vietnam (as well as others) do the same.

Our bad lenses are coming from all over the world now!!

benjiboy · Feb 2, 2015

flavio81 said:
Japanese cameras and lenses, first Nikon & later Canon, were responsible for the downfall of the german camera industry and this was NOT achieved by selling "bad" lenses.

I agree with your statement, but Japanese industry benefited greatly after WW11 as did Germany from the vast amount of American tax payers money was poured into it to rebuild their industrial base that had been destroyed, and American technological expertise to improve their industrial products, remember it was only about ninety years before that U.S. admiral Perry first went to Japan when it was still a medieval country.

Your worst lens

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