The Competition.
So, with the old adage ‘one mans junk is another mans treasure’ I decided to have a little guessing game.
The ‘prizes’ are:
1.    A  Zeiss Jena Tesssar 50mm f2.8.
This lens has it’s problems. The focusing is stuck and the lens is loose. Someone with the knowledge would need to delve inside and see what’s wrong. On the plus side, the glass and blades appear clean, and this lens is capable of excellent results by all accounts.
2.    A ‘mystery’ 50mm f1.8 lens. This is a screw mount lens, smaller than M42 (M39?). There’s no makers name, all it says is ‘lens made in Japan’ Everything appears fine (glass, blades etc).
3.    A  Leningrad 4 lightmeter, which appears to be working fine.

I’ll send these three items to the ‘winner’ at my cost.
Due to the prohibitive cost of registered international post, they’ll just be sent at standard rate, but I’ll get confirmation of posting, if possible.

So, how do you go about winning this selection of ‘fabulous’ prizes?
Easy, just guess what the mystery lens is that took the image at the bottom of the page.
I’m looking for everything, make, model, version, focal length, maximum f stop.
Anyone who’s interested gets one guess per day.
Whoever guesses the lens first is the winner.
If nobody gets it right within a week, I’ll award the prize to whoever I deem to be the closest.
The winner sends me their address, and I’ll post off the prize. Simple.
Organizers decision is final blah, blah….
Good luck, Rog.
Larger size here: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7100/7226 … 47ea_k.jpg
And, now the image:

And a little one :

And bigger yellow ones :

If you have the opportunity to visit Touraine  , be sure to go to Saint Aignan where is situated the Zoo of Beauval  , surely the best zoo in France and among the best in the world ! :  http://www.zoobeauval.com/assets/gp/doc … pectus.pdf
I couldn't find any English version but the images give you a good appreciation of this zoo .
I visited it in 1993 when I shot these series with my Pentacon 6 and slide film , I don't remember which lens .

Ouch, and I tought Leica lens caps were expensive :-)

with friends  , to show the dimensions of the pit :

A tree grows at the bottom of the pit

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/revie … hrom.shtml
http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/05/10 … on-preview

As it is, I'll stick with my Trip 35, Yashica D, old SLRs, FP4 and newly acquired Paterson tank for now :-) Looking forward to going back in time and doing some real b/w on the cheap!

The first of all the pictures was taken with the 35-105 mm zoom, the second one always with the 50 mm. Since I couldn't figure out yet how to reversibly fix the aperture pin for use on my Oly E520, all pictures were taken at fully opened aperture, f3.5 and f1.9 respectively.
NOTE: Keep in mind that all pictures have not been post processed in any way, they were uploaded straight from the camera. No resizing, no sharpening!

The full 10 MP resolution photos can be found in the album - definitely more spectacular in full res.!

What do you think?

I personally am absolutely stunned by the performance of the 35-105 mm zoom! At first I was not sure if it would be just  a below-average images producing hunk of glass, collecting dust on a shelf - since I rarely heard good things about the early M42 zooms - but it totally blew me away! Especially the picture of the trees in front of that house (3rd from above) was a big surprise. In my opinion it has a very strong 3-D-effect, like the Leica lenses famous for their 3D look!

The f1.9 fifty looks not bad as well - could be very good for portraits and b/w because of its subtle contrasts, and I suppose it could be a lot sharper if it were stopped down. Will have to try once I get the aperture pin fixed.

My Praktica MTL5 recently annoyed the hell outta me (self timer lever falling off, drained batteries badly, the longer I used it the less I liked the focusing screen and same goes for the weird stop-down/shutter button placement), so I walked into several camera stores to find a suitable replacement.

At last I came home with a very nice bargain as I think:
- RevueFLEX AC I (which is a rebranded Chinon CE-3 "Memotron")
- Auto Revuenon 50 mm f1.9
- Auto Revuenon MC 35-105 mm f3.5-4.5, with a skylight filter on it

(Sorry, could not take pictures of them yet - will hopefully be able to make some this evening)

Price: Just a little over 20 EUR, the trade-in of the Praktica MTL5 with the Pentacon 50 mm f1.8 included!

The Revueflex / Chinon has apparently been well used, lots of brass at all edges. It meters perfectly, times are running spot-on like new, all in all it appears to be in mechanically sound condition. Only the film door seems to close not really light tight - but that's a question for a topic on its own.

Both lenses look like new, all rings move smoothly, no fungus, no dirt, no dust. A first little test on my Oly E-520 showed them to be very nice performers. Especially the zoom surprised me, I've always wanted a nice M42 zoon lens, and it seems I found one here by accident. No bad distortion, CA or bad flare, as far as I could see yesterday.

But now to my question: Who built those little gems?
A little research confused me even more. It seems that the zoom could be the same as the Yashica ML 35-105 mm f3.5-4.5 zoom. It looks identical. But the f1.9 fifty seems to have been marketed as Chinon, Yashica, Cosina and probably some more brands I haven't found yet!

Any ideas or further knowledge, anyone?

.

My Canon developed Stuck Lens Syndrome and I had given it up as a total loss until I chanced upon G9 lenses for sale for about £30. I fitted it without too much difficulty ,(I thought), but it won't power up and I think the battery door switch is the culprit. Camera is assembled but looking through the switch hole by the door I can't see a little switch lever like my G12 has. Assuming that it has been totalled then it should be possible to short the connection to resuscitate the camera? Any Gotchas that anyone can think of?

Tony

Yesterday I shot this pictures in the hills near Toulon , it was a beautiful  Spring day  ;

The stone arch:

Wild Tulips and Lily of the Valley :

This lens can focus down to 24 cm

http://www.jedi.com/obiwan/photo/50mmtest/

I haven't gone through all of them to analyze the results yet, but I'm open to any interpretations any of you may find.  Below is the complete list of lenses tested.  Zooms were set at 50mm.

Nikon Nikkor-S.C 55mm f/1.2
Nikon Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 NKJ
Nikon Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8
Olympus F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8
Asahi/Pentax Super-Takumar 55mm f/1.8
Asahi/Pentax Super-Takumar 50mm f/1.4
Asahi/Pentax SMC Takumar 50mm f/1.4 (two copies)
Asahi/Pentax SMC Pentax-M 50mm f/2
Yashica ML 50mm f/2
Tokina AT-X SD 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5
Canon 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6
Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5
Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 OS HSM

More in my journal entry.

Enjoy.

I shot these pics , last saturday with my Sony Nex-3 and Biogon 2,8/35 ( from my Contax IIa )

Two other Frigates : Forbin and Chevalier Paul

And this smaller one

The decayed shipwrecks :

  "Craziness -on -sea" is this one :

Some peoples like this kind of floating residential blocks ....

I received another Porst 55mm f1.2 from a German seller via Ebay. It was described as being in perfect condition. It explicitly stated that the focus ring went 100% smoothly. That last part wasn't true! It's stuck. I can't, for the life of me, get any movement in the focus ring.

I tried to disassemble it, and I could get all the way down to the aperture blades. Cleaning out the tiny specs of dust inside was very easy.

But I cannot get to the focus helicoid.

Does anybody know how? Is there a assembly/disassembly guide anywhere? Or a guide for a similarly built lens? I'm getting kinda desperate now.

The most frustrating thing is. I sold my own beloved Porst 50mm f1.2 about two months ago. But I started missing it! I regretted selling it a lot. And that's why I bought this one. It's my punishment I tell you!