Kenlock mc tor 100-300 5.6

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 Many vintage lenses are known to be small, compact and fairly lightweight, but this one is not. More than 19 centimeters long with the sun hood collapsed and 700 grams of weight it's kind of a beast.

 I bought this lens along with the Konica Autoreflex TC and the Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8, and my first question was: “how the heck did they do this? How the heck did they use such long, heavy lens on an analog film camera?”

 I mean, even with the in-body stabilization of my Sony a6500 I had a really hard time using this lens, getting stable footage and avoiding shaky pictures, especially at 300 millimeters, partially obviously because of the focal length, but also because this lens is fricking heavy and makes the system really front heavy. Plus the adapter can't really hold that much weight so it flexes a little bit. Yeah, that was kind of weird, I seriously feared for my camera while using this lens, so much so that I always hold the system by the lens and not by the camera. Because of the way this lens is constructed, with the sliding external barrel to zoom and focus, it doesn't have a support to mount the lens itself on a tripod. I gotta say, it is way stronger and less flexible on the actual camera body it came with.

 Some vintage lenses are really easy to use, almost familiar in a way, while this Kenlock needs some practice, especially at 300mm, when the maximum aperture of f5.6, which might not sound impressive, still produces quite shallow depth of field and focusing can be tricky at times. This also means that you will have to slow down a little bit more, take your time and think about what you're doing when you are composing and getting ready for a shot, which it's not always a bad thing.

 Even when properly in focus, at f5.6 is kind of soft, but from f8 on it gets pretty sharp.

 One thing I really can’t stand about this lens, and many other vintage tele-zooms, is the “macro” marking on the side. I mean, at least they’ve been partially honest by specifying it’s a 1:3.8 macro at 300mm.

 Long story short, this Kenlock is just another mediocre vintage telezoom; some photographers might find a use for it and take advantage of the reach and compression, but it’s not the lens for me. In fact, I sold it right away.

As always, check the full video for all the samples.



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