Cosina 28mm f2.8 - Lens review

-

 When you get into buying and selling vintage lenses, you are bound to end up with some that are in bad conditions and when, a few months ago, I bought a box with a few lenses, well, I wasn’t surprised to find dust, scratches and one straight up broken lens.

 The Cosina 28mm we are looking at today comes from that box and has the front element clearly bent and deformed, and it could use some lubrication at the focusing helicoid, but overall I had a good feeling about it, given that it still works perfectly and the glass elements are clean.

 Although this is the first Cosina lens that I own, I was already kind of familiar with the brand as a third party manufacturer, founded, by the way, in 1959 in Nagano, Japan. What I didn’t know is that in 1999 it acquired Voigtlander and it is still active to this day.

 Cosina 28mm f2.8

The Cosina 28mm weighs 225g, it is 38mm long when focused to infinity and 42mm when extended, with a 49mm front thread.

The iris has 5 blades, the aperture is clicked and it goes from f2.8 to f22.

The focusing ring is rubberized and it turns 120 degrees. Minimum focusing distance is 30cm.

This one I got has a Pentax K mount. (affiliate link)

 Sharpness is way better than expected. Even wide open at f2.8 it is almost perfect in the center, falling off a bit towards the edges, where we can see quite a bit of vignetting. By f8 almost the entire image is tack sharp, but the corners are still a bit darker.

 Also, barrel distortion can be noticeable at times.

 Chromatic aberration is very well controlled but it can be spotted here and there if you are actively looking for it.

 Background blur is pretty soft and might feel busy because boke balls are small with some harder edges, yet, they maintain the shape quite well even further from the center. Stopping down to f4 they take an interesting rounded pentagonal shape.

 Flares are well controlled and ghosting has been an issue only once in my time shooting with this lens.

 I also did a quick comparison between the Cosina and the Canon FD 28mm 2.8. They are very, very close in terms of sharpness; the Canon is noticeably brighter and a tad wider while the Cosina produces warmer and slightly more saturated tones.

 I was expecting this lens to be decent but not really good and I’m happy to say that I was wrong. Sure, the pentagonal boke balls and the warm, saturated tones may not be for everyone, but it is undeniable that the image quality is there. In fact, I dare to say that it might pair quite well with my Asahi Pentax lenses.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yashica 135mm f2.8 ML - Lens review

-
Image
  Last winter I bought three Yashica lenses and a camera body fo quite cheap, because they were not in the best conditions, especially the 135mm.  The optical elements were dirty, the aperture had been poorly de-clicked and, worst of all, the focusing helicoid was completely off and needed to be recalibrated and lubricated, so I gave it to a lab to be fixed and cleaned and now it works perfectly.  Yashica is one of those well know names in the industry, with a history dating back to the late '40s and in 1975 they introduced the Contax Yashica bayonet mount in collaboration with Carl Zeiss. They had three ranges of lenses: the basic one was the DSB, which had single coatings, above that was the ML, with multi coatings, and the top of the line was the Zeiss AE series.  Now, back to this lens.  The body is made of metal and weights 410 grams; it is 76mm long when focused to infinity and 90mm when fully extended, with a 52mm front thread and, my favorite feature, a built in sun hood.  
Read more

Soligor 28mm f2.8 C/D - vintage lens review

-
Image
Soligor was a supplier of photographic equipment based in the United States and Germany, active mostly between the ‘60s and the early ‘90s. They had a very comprehensive catalog of lenses, made in Japan by manufacturers like Tokina and Tamron, covering a wide array of focal lengths and they were available for all major camera brands. Soligor lenses were also sold under alternative brand names like Hanimar, Porst or Super Carener, in different geographical areas. From my research, the 28mm 2.8 alone has at least 21 different versions, so chances are that yours looks different than mine. Specifically, the one I own is part of the C/D line released in the mid-1970s as a premium line of lenses. The Soligor 28mm is made out of metal, it weights 200g, it is 33mm long when focused to infinity and 37mm when extended, with a 49mm front thread. The iris has six blades, the aperture is clicked and it goes from f2.8 to f22 The focusing ring is rubberized and it turns 180 degrees and mi
Read more

Canon FD 100mm f2.8 - Lens review

-
Image
 Canon FD lenses have grown in popularity in the last few years because they're cheap, easy to find, reliable and with cheap adapters you can mount them to modern digital cameras. Mirrorless like Sony's or Canon's EOS R and RF will work best and will be easier to adapt, but you can use Canon FD lenses on your DSLRs too, although you might need a different adapter with a focal reducer, due to the incompatible flange distance. Personally, I'm not a fan of focal reducers, as they cad degrade or alter the quality of the image produced by the lens.  Anyway, these Canon FD lenses are completely manual and have no electronic, and this one specifically is part of the so-called nFD, or new FD, series, introduced in 1979.  Everyone seems to love them so, back in 2017 when I was getting into vintage lenses, I was eager to try them. Luckily, a friend of mine owned two of them and he was kind enough to let me borrow them for a few weeks.  Right off the bat this lens sounds promising
Read more