Here she is, a Multi Coated Pentacon 50mm f/1.8. Not the finest piece of glass ever produced but a renowned good one. The big grippy focus ring operates smoothly and is a pleasure to use, I didn't have any problems using manual focus with live view to focus on exactly what I wanted by twisting alone. The focus ring has a huge (and I'm led to believe, quite rare) 360 degrees of movement, which allows you to be quite accurate.
The aperture ring is situated at the back, moves very freely and has a nice snap action as it slots into a setting. It doesn't have a posh round aperture but I found that the out of focus highlights looked quite round anyway.
The build quality in general is very nice. The whole thing is metal, it feels very solid, not a lens I would worry about breaking as it rolled about in my bag. This will probably work out to be a good thing as it is about to embark on quite some travel.
The lens has a switch to shift it from A mode to M mode. It is important that when mounted on an modern DSLR, the switch is in M mode, or the aperture will remain wide open. The images produced at f/1.8 are a little soft at 100%, but stopping down only once results in very sharp images.
The thread is M42, which is an old standard for 35mm cameras. I'm not a fan of screw threads at all as I have had a few incidents in the past where adapters became permanently attached to the lens. If you are going to use an adapter to attach this lens, be sure to screw it on very lightly, or the lens will be at risk of becoming a permanent EOS or F mount lens.
The multi coating prevents flare, it seems to do the job quite nicely. Images shot straight into sunlight look well, and the contrast seems to be consistently high.
The aperture ring is situated at the back, moves very freely and has a nice snap action as it slots into a setting. It doesn't have a posh round aperture but I found that the out of focus highlights looked quite round anyway.
The build quality in general is very nice. The whole thing is metal, it feels very solid, not a lens I would worry about breaking as it rolled about in my bag. This will probably work out to be a good thing as it is about to embark on quite some travel.
The lens has a switch to shift it from A mode to M mode. It is important that when mounted on an modern DSLR, the switch is in M mode, or the aperture will remain wide open. The images produced at f/1.8 are a little soft at 100%, but stopping down only once results in very sharp images.
The thread is M42, which is an old standard for 35mm cameras. I'm not a fan of screw threads at all as I have had a few incidents in the past where adapters became permanently attached to the lens. If you are going to use an adapter to attach this lens, be sure to screw it on very lightly, or the lens will be at risk of becoming a permanent EOS or F mount lens.
The multi coating prevents flare, it seems to do the job quite nicely. Images shot straight into sunlight look well, and the contrast seems to be consistently high.
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