Preemptive annoyance tinges my whispered words because I know this rabbit is going to run. There is no threat. I just want a photo or two. But rabbits don’t know a camera from a gun, nor a lumbering human with good intentions from a ravenous coyote, apparently.

“Stop being so twitchy and just relax, so that I can relax, and then we can both relax together, for Christ’s sake!”

But then the pea-sized brain in the animal’s skull screams the existential warning, “DANGER! DANGER!” It bounds away chaotically, and one of its half-dozen leaps brings it three feet into the air, its hind legs flailing pointlessly against the snatching predatory jaws that it has entirely imagined. It flees approximately twenty feet, stops when it realizes it’s not dead, and turns its head to look at me, a blade of half-eaten grass dangling stupidly from its lip.

“Wow. Very impressive. You escaped.”

I wearily push myself up and stalk toward the creature once more. I wonder about those enormous black eyes. Placed as they are on the side of its skull, does it see ahead of itself when fleeing? Or can it only see to its sides like a deer? When panicked, is it prone to career into a tree?

I’ve apparently approached in an acceptable way this time, since I’m allowed to get about ten feet closer than the time before. I stoop once more to sit in the grass alongside the rabbit.

“Alright.” I sigh. “Let’s try it again.”

Photography has been a good friend. A way to chill out. A salve for anxiety and worry. At times in my life I’ve used cameras and lenses and film and tripods to philosophically refocus. As I’ve written in previous articles, even the worst cameras end up pointing at what’s important. I could add to that observation that even if the camera points at nothing of particular importance, the act of pointing it at anything can itself be important.

This rabbit is important enough. A small living thing with the same hopes and dreams as all living things (though we humans tend to complicate what is so fundamental); to have food to eat and a place to live, for our kids to live lives that are happier, healthier, and longer than our own. That’s all most of us want. Sometimes we don’t get it. At those times, photography has been useful. As it is now.

I raise the camera and feel the weight. It’s not insignificant, because I’m using a Sony A7 mirror-less camera fitted with a ten-dollar Nikon F mount adapter and a sixty-dollar Soligor 90-230mm F/nothing-to-write-home-about telephoto zoom lens from, like, 1971. The lens weighs more than the camera, but it’s all-metal and glass and feels, surprisingly enough, wonderful. The focus throw is long and gentle and the aperture clicks into its detents beautifully.

In addition, because the lens was designed to operate uncoupled to the mechanisms within the camera (Nikons in the 1970s and Sonys in the 2020s alike), it features a second aperture ring which stops the lens down in a progressive way. The iris is circular and beautiful, and before I’ve ever mounted it to a camera I’m sure it will make interesting, if not creamy, bokeh.

The lens.

The rabbit.

So anyway, there I am sitting in the grass peering through a viewfinder and fiddling with an aperture ring and a focus ring, and zooming in and composing and framing, and remembering which button on the mirror-less Sony activates “close-magnification focus assistance” or whatever they call it, and the worries are sloughing off.

No, that’s not entirely accurate, if I’m honest. They’re not sloughing off. But maybe they’re out-gassing, dissolving at a molecular level, becoming ever so slightly lighter. I suspect that another two hours of shooting this rabbit might get me to a point where I feel like everything is going to be just fine. But this rabbit has got shit to do, and it hops away after about three minutes.

“Well, let’s see what we’ve got in Lightroom.”

The thing about photography, for me, is that I’m sort of adrift. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing anymore. My whole photographic life has been taking pictures of my children and trying out cameras that I think look neat. I still like my children, so that’s fine. I take pictures of them, same as always. But as far as the “cameras that look neat” thing is concerned, I’ve tried them all.

I love film cameras. Always have, always will. I’ve shot every film camera I care about, and hundreds about which I’ve cared very little. Plus, film is expensive and getting pricier every year. And then I have less time to do it, and more bills to pay, and personal situations to work through, and oh, boy, we are going down this hole again, Jimbo? Where’s that rabbit when I need him.

Let’s get back to cameras and photography.

My pictures of the rabbit are pretty good. They contain a rabbit, and some grass, and nice colors and sharpness most of the time, when I’ve focused right. The shots made at wide-open aperture have strong subject isolation and interesting bokeh, as I suspected they might. The shots made with a tighter aperture are sharp. Not as sharp as would be with a modern lens, naturally, but sharp in that old fashioned way which lacks of clinical perfection. A good thing.

In Lightroom I’m able to turn my decent RAW photos of a rabbit into whatever I want. I can make these pictures look like clean digital photos, or Ilford HP5 film or Kodak T-Max 100, Kodak Portra, Delta 3200, all by sliding a few sliders and knowing what I’m doing. I’ve even managed to create a pre-set which makes a shot look very much like images made with the long-ago discontinued Fujifilm Natura 1600 color film, which is my favorite film I’ve ever used. (And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a picture of a rabbit in that article, too!)

I love using old lenses on new cameras. I love it more than I love shooting film cameras or shooting the newest digital Leica, or instant film, or anything else. Old lenses adapted to new mirror-less cameras; nothing is better. We get the more interesting imaging characteristics of old cameras and film, without the hassle and cost of actually shooting film.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the rabbit.

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I should preface that we won’t be discussing telephoto zooms. Another article on this site handles that conversation beautifully, and I encourage you to read that as well (after you’ve finished my article, of course).

Okay, let’s start for real, with my first foray into the new world of long telephoto lenses. Previously, I’d though long focal lengths were beyond my reach, as lenses 200mm and beyond commanded very notable price tags. This is especially true in the digital photography ecosystem. Nikon’s current F mount auto-focus 200mm f/4 macro lens, for example, starts at about $900 on the used market.

But the value proposition turned a complete one-eighty when I investigated the prices for manual focus telephotos. I recently acquired, a pre-AI 200mm f/4 Auto Nikkor Q with a factory AI conversion, which only pried from my wallet a measly $40.

After reading that price, you may impulsively ask yourself the same questions I initially had. What’s wrong with it? Is it damaged? Haze? Fungus? Was it dredged from a river? Is the focusing ring impossible to turn? Are the aperture blades soaked in oil? All of these questions and more circulated my mind, but even still, I risked the purchase. When delivery day rolled around, my expectations were exceeded ten fold. Not only is the glass in immaculate condition, the lens body itself has only suffered from some very minor paint loss. For a lens that’s almost sixty years old, I was very surprised. And the delivery of this lens is where this interesting but informative article, and my journey with cheap telephoto lenses, began.

If They’re So Cheap, How Can They Be Good?

Since my experience with the 200mm Nikkor is still relatively new and fresh, I want to now talk about an observation I made while still researching the lens. The common questions I seem to come across, whether it’s talking to people in person or pouring over forums online is this – How much would you actually use a lens like that? And what would you even use that for?

An initial response to questions like these would usually be met with silence or mere speculation. In order for a proper answer, I opened up an old booklet that I proudly own. This booklet is one that Nikon would include with the purchase of a Nikon F or Nikon F2, and it delves into the vast catalog of Nikkor glass. The answers were there. Nikon predicted a vastness of applications for these future bargain basement lenses; architecture, portraits, sports, auto racing, wildlife, and even landscapes were among the uses for these optical tanks.

If they are so versatile, then why the low price? One word: auto-focus. Or rather, the lack of auto-focus. Before the blessing of auto-focus, photographers had the arduous task of tracking an athlete, sports car, or cheetah. It’s not easy. They had to figure out quick and simplistic methods to achieving sharp or relatively sharp photos. These methods would include setting the hyper focal marks (those color coded lines if you’re using a Nikkor) on the lens barrel and then setting the exposure on the camera to track the moving subject while clicking and advancing away. Another method was keeping a steady hand on the focus ring and slowly turning towards infinity if the subject was moving away, and vice versa if the subject was moving closer.

The difficulty of these methods and the skill required to successfully employ them can be seen in the photos made with telephoto lenses in the era of manual focus. When we examine photos of moving subjects from the 1960s, ’70s, and even into the ’80s, the photos are certainly reasonably sharp, some even look like focus was missed only by a fraction. But many shots (even those made in such illustrious publications as National Geographic, aren’t what we’d call sharp in the auto-focus era.

But these old lenses did the job and they did it well. And they can still do it today. Arguably, with cheap adapters and mirror-less cameras and focus peaking, they can do it better today than ever.

Optical Chops

I’ll briefly talk about the optical quality of my 200mm f/4 Nikkor. For full disclosure, I am in no way an optical engineer. That being said, I am endlessly fascinated by the engineering involved in making these photographic tools; especially considering many of Nikon’s famous lenses were made during a time where the only tools the engineers had were pencils and slide rules. Impressive doesn’t even come close to describing the skills involved.

The 200mm f/4 Nikkor was introduced in 1961 during Nikon’s pre-AI era. Early versions of the pre-AI copies have six blade apertures, though this changed to seven blades in 1963. Four elements in four groups comprise the optical formula with the formula changing to five elements in five groups with the introduction of the AI series in 1977. At this time the minimal focusing distance was also decreased from three meters (9.8 ft) to two meters (6.5 ft).

The biggest technical boast this lens has to offer is that it is the first full scale telephoto lens to utilize a fully automatic aperture mechanism. This means that the aperture stayed open when composing a shot, stopping down the moment the shutter is released, and then automatically opening to maximum aperture afterward. Any pre-AI Nikkor glass that has “Nikkor Auto” on the lens will have this mechanism built into the lens. This is important because this is a common function of lenses that we all take for granted, myself included.

I believe we owe great thanks to this lens for changing the course of lens mechanics for decades to come. Is my bias towards Nikon and Nikkor glass showing? Perhaps, but only a smidge.

Ergonomics of the Manual Telephoto Lens

Mine is a large lens, and other manual focus telephoto lenses will be bigger than the nifty-fifty with which most photographers are familiar. There’s no two ways about it. Choose wisely when deciding what body to mount it to, because you start to feel the weight if you’re shooting with something heavy, like a Nikon F2, which is coincidentally my usual daily driver. That being said, manual focus teles are far smaller and lighter compared with their modern auto-focus descendants.

I also highly recommend using a camera body that offers through the lens metering (TTL) and making sure your metered prism on your chosen camera body works. Metering for a landscape with a handheld meter is usually pretty straight forward and the light, unless it’s changing every little moment, will usually be kind and play ball and not cause you to miss exposure. However, the same cannot be said if you are photographing a subject on a bright sunny day and your subject happens to be in the shade or backlit. Depending on how much/fast your subject is moving, aperture priority is more than likely the best way to go in these types of cases, but if you are granted a slower working pace, then a straight forward through the lens meter should work just fine in most cases.

Finally, I want to make mention of the lens hood that just about all of these lenses came with (if your used lens is missing its hood, try to buy a new one). I forget to use mine quite often, but I can guarantee they will save flares and unwanted light trying to peer in on the front element. Plus, the telephoto look isn’t quite completed until a lens hood is utilized.

Other Examples of the Type

Before I start breaking down my personal experiences and applications with my particular 200mm lens, I have made an extensive list and notes of price for various 200mm lenses across various makes and mounts. Some of these will be surprising because of their price; of course it varies depending on condition, but it’s still worth mentioning how good these deals are. I would highly encourage everyone to look into one and add it to their lens collection. I am a huge advocate of great deals on great lenses, and these are arguably some of the best on the used market today.

• Konica AR Mount – 200mm f/4 ($20-$55); 200mm f/3.5 ($31-$75); Soligor MC 200mm f/2.8 Konica AR mount ($230, if mint)
• Minolta SR (MC/MD) Mount – MD Tele Rokkor-X 200mm f/4 ($20-$55); MC Rokkor – QF 200mm f/3.5 ($40); Rokkor 200mm f/4.5 ($60, if mint)
• Pentax K Mount – SMC Pentax-K 200mm f/4 ($30-$60); SMC Pentax-K 200mm f/2.5 ($200-$355); Cosina Cosinon-T 200mm f/4 ($30)
• Canon FD/New FD Mount – New FD 200mm f/2.8 Internal Focus ($150-$200); FD 200mm f/4 SSC ($45-$100); FD 200mm f/4 standard ($65)
• Contax-Yashica (C/Y) Mount – Yashica ML C/Y mount 200mm f/4 ($130); Contax Carl Zeiss Tele-Tessar T* 200mm f/3.5 ($150-$300)
• M42 Screw Mount – Promaster 200mm f/3.3 ($40); Pentax Takumar 200mm f/3.5 18 blade aperture ($100-$150); Mamiya Sekor 200mm f/3.5 ($65-$75)
• Olympus OM Mount– 200mm f/4 E. Zuiko ($59-$100); 200mm f/4 AUTO T ($48)

Canon FD 200mm F/2.8 Lens Review - A Case for Legacy Telephoto Primes

Chris shoots the Canon FD 200mm lens at the racetrack, and it's made him think twice about the inexpensive telephoto.

The Manual Focus Telephoto in Various Photographic Styles

A fair amount of time has passed since my acquisition of the 200mm Nikkor. I haven’t taken it with me very often. but the times that I do use it are always a new lesson in composition and thought. Here are some of my experiences with the manual focus tele in various shooting scenarios.

Landscapes, City and Street : First, 200mm is longer than I expected. The jump from 85mm to 200mm is astounding. Even stepping up from 135mm is quite a noticeable difference. One abrupt discovery: your subject needs to be a considerable distance away from you. The lens allows the ability to really isolate a subject matter and direct the viewers eyes firmly on the subject, allowing no distractions.

For architecture, it’s not uncommon to use a lens such as a 15mm or a 20mm to show scale between the structure and the people that walk within its vicinity. To highlight certain features, long telephoto lenses are perfect for the task. They may be simply made from an engineering stand point, but the utilitarian aspect of their build makes them simply sharp. Landscapes make for a pleasing experience with a 200mm since everything on the horizon that would usually look minuscule with a wider lens is brought much closer to the viewer. I would highly recommend shooting landscapes with a tripod, if possible, because any small breath can and will cause you to move and more often than not compromise your composition.

Portraits and Bokeh : Portraits are a bit more of a tricky matter since the closest focusing distance of my particular lens is about seven feet. This will only serve well if I am outside or in a considerably large studio where such room could be granted. But the effort to do portraits with a lens of this focal length will be well rewarded. I say this with confidence because the mushy, blurry background (otherwise known as bokeh to those in the portrait photography business) produced by this lens is fantastic and arguably a worthy challenger to the portrait titans of the realm such as the Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 and Nikkor 105mm f/1.4 (lenses which command small fortunes, even on the used market). I understand those lenses have a certain application and use, working portrait photographers use them until the focusing rings fall off.

Anecdotally, if you’re like me and don’t usually see bokeh as a deal maker or breaker, then these affordable telephotos will do the job ten times over. I usually make portraits with my 35mm f/1.4 AI-S, but now that I have a 200mm at my disposal, I can really start to perfect portraits across whatever space I’m working. If you are shooting handheld, I usually recommend slowing your breathing patters while composing and either holding in an inhale or exhaling very slowly right before or during taking the photo. Again, these are things that have helped me and may not work for you, so don’t be afraid to develop your own method.

Final Thoughts

The experience of incorporating a manual focus telephoto lens (in my case, a Nikkor 200mm) into my rotation of lenses has been a challenging, yet fulfilling one. My planning, composing, and overall style are put to the test whenever I grab and use this lens. The overall flow of my work may be slowed down due to the changing mindset of composing, but that seems to be part of the beauty of shooting a lens like this.

Everything about this lens has been a welcomed addition to my ever-growing catalog of Nikkor lenses. The build quality is as expected, the glass is wonderfully sharp, especially for a near sixty year old lens, and I can guarantee that I only want to keep shooting it more so that I can quickly improve with the focal length.

I implore everyone to seek out a long telephoto lens for their camera system. Whether shooting film or digital with an adapter, it’s a great investment. The odds of finding a great lens for a low price are high. Time has proven these lenses were made to last. Like the old truism goes, “They don’t make them like they used to.”

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The post Why I Love Cheap Manual Focus Telephoto Lenses appeared first on Casual Photophile.

After six months with the lens, I realize that no matter if I expected the lens to be terrible, mediocre, or even great, I would’ve been wrong. Somehow, the Nikon Series E 75-150mm f/3.5 seems to exist beyond those descriptors. Even though it’s unglamorous and completely utilitarian both in its design and its imaging characteristics, it has somehow delivered all (read: ALL) of my favorite images taken this year. It has since outlasted the now-dead FA it came packaged with, pulled me away from my beloved Olympus Pen FT for most of the year, and has somehow found a near-permanent home on my Nikon F3. I’d call it a sleeper lens, but it’s a bit more special than that.

Unbeknownst to me, the Nikon Series E 75-150mm f/3.5 was, in its day, a truly special and renowned lens. It was a true classic back then (most notably used by Galen Rowell for his most famous photo), and was made for the consumer market but beloved by professional photographers for its unassuming versatility and quality. Today, it could represent the best value for money in the Nikon lens catalog. It was, and still is, one of the rarest objects in photography – a lens made for everybody.

The Background

The Nikon Series E 75-150mm f/3.5 was set up for success early. Even though it was formulated for Nikon’s budget-minded Series E line, it was designed by one of Nikon’s best minds, Yutaka Iizuka. Iizuka’s pedigree leading up to the design of this lens was impressive; he most notably helped design the groundbreaking Zoom-Nikkor 50-300mm f/4.5, one of the very first high-powered zooms made for 35mm still cameras. So when the company came calling for an inexpensive, but high-quality zoom lens, the brilliant Iizuka answered.

“Inexpensive” was certainly the most important word in the design brief for all of the Series E lenses, but this didn’t necessarily correlate to a drop in quality, as many people repeat in modern times. Quite the opposite – Nikon believed that good design would be able to withstand and overcome the cost-cutting measures put in place for the Series E line. This philosophy guided Iizuka through the lens’ design, which featured a simplified (for zoom lenses, anyway) twelve element in four groups structure optimized for a shortened zoom range of 75-150mm and a constant aperture of f/3.5. If the lens was any bigger or more complicated, it would be unwieldy and expensive; any smaller and it would be too demanding to manufacture and more expensive still. This specific design ensured that Nikon could save money and increase manufacturing volume while still having a lens which performed to their incredibly high standard.

The narrower zoom range also ensured high image quality. Its design could have been stretched to cover a greater focal range, but it was limited to 75-105mm to make sure that the lens didn’t sacrifice image quality at its extreme ends, as zooms often tended to do. The Series E 75-150mm’s uncommonly clean, sharp visual signature at every part of its zoom range as well as a versatile constant maximum aperture of f/3.5 gave credence to the claim that zooms could conceivably replace an entire set of prime lenses without sacrificing image quality.

The lens became a cult favorite among professional photographers seeking an easy-to-use, compact, and cheap short telephoto solution. It was portable in comparison to the big boppers of the day like the famed Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm f/2.8, and could conceivably cover portrait photography, landscape photography, sports photography, and general photography duties due to its stellar all-around performance.

Time, however, hasn’t been particularly kind to the reputation of the Series E 75-150mm zoom. Vintage zoom lenses have never had a particularly good reputation in today’s film photography renaissance, mostly owing to the vast improvement in zoom lens technology in the last twenty years, and because of the glamor of shooting prime lenses. The estimation of the Series E 75-150mm seems to be that the lens is simply Good Enough these days, and that its stellar reputation in professional photography circles is outdated. After using it extensively for the past few months, I can see where these arguments come from, but can’t disagree more about its utility. Although it doesn’t immediately dazzle, it is absolutely still one of the most usable, convenient, and dare I say high-performing short telephoto lenses out there, zoom or prime.

The Details

If there’s any prevailing strength of the Series E 75-150mm f/3.5, it is Yutaka Iizuka’s original design. The design was good enough to endure the initial cost-cutting, but it was also good enough to stand the test of time. To this day, the lens possesses a truly remarkable sharpness from corner-to-corner at every focal length that holds up even under heavy cropping. Distortion is minimized at either end of the zoom range, with minor pincushion distortion at 75mm and minor barrel distortion at 150mm. And I really do mean it when I say “minor” – in practice this really doesn’t affect most images barring critical architectural work, and even then a quick Lightroom adjustment will eliminate the distortion altogether.

The other strength of this lens is something uncommon to zoom lenses – bokeh. The proclamation that zoom lenses do not create good bokeh is usually one parroted by prime-lens obsessives, and while somewhat true, the repeated assertion does not apply to the Series E 75-150mm. Iizuka intentionally designed the lens to create smoother bokeh by reducing the amount of spherical aberration correction at close focusing ranges, a technique also used in the fabled Nikkor AI 135mm f/2 lens. This lens can paint bokeh with the best of them, which makes it usable for portraiture and close-up photography in ways that even many modern zooms cannot replicate, which makes the lens that much more versatile.

The beauty of the Series E 75-150mm is that all of its features come in service of practicality. Its compact design, good bokeh, and sharpness at every part of its focal range makes it an obvious choice for any shooter, professional or casual. I can see why professional travel photographers loved this lens back in the day – it’s a far more sensible choice if you’re not sure about what kind of image you’ll be running into. You simply don’t have to swap lenses as much, nor do you have to compromise by lugging around a heavy albatross of a zoom lens. All zoom lenses have this inherent advantage, but the Series E 75-150mm’s quality and practicality ensures that you’re also just as satisfied with the result as you would be with a prime lens.

While the lens is stellar in nearly every department, it does leave a little to be desired in a few key areas.

Optically, the lens suffers from pretty bad flare. Flare resistance is quite weak despite the design’s attempts to mitigate it, and images will tend to lose a huge amount of contrast if there is any amount of light that glances off the front element (note: this can, of course, be remedied by use of the Nikon HS-7 lens hood).

Build-wise the lens suffers from zoom creep, a problem that sometimes plagues “one-touch” zooms which feature a push-pull zoom action. Lenses which suffer from zoom creep have lost all friction over time, meaning that their barrels will tend to slide to their maximum or minimum focal length at the slightest provocation. Upon receiving my lens, the zoom creep was so bad that it just couldn’t hold itself at a constant focal length, so I had to remedy it by sticking a piece of electrical tape on the barrel to get it to stay put. It wasn’t a huge deal, but it was and is a major failing of the zoom design of this lens.

Barring those practical faults, there is one fault that might be a deal-breaker for some – it’s too practical. The lens’s zoom range of 75-150mm and maximum aperture of f/3.5 is respectable, but isn’t capable of the high-flying acrobatics of the Vivitar Series 1 70-210 f/2.8 or Minolta 70-210 f/4 “beercan” lens. And except for maybe its stellar bokeh characteristics, the lens’ rendering doesn’t immediately dazzle. It’s sharp and renders an incredible amount of detail at every focal length, but it doesn’t “paint” quite like other lenses, most notably prime short telephotos. The Nikkor 85mm f/2, 105mm f/2.5, and 135mm f/2 come to mind as truly beautiful lenses which have the edge on the Series E 75-150mm when it comes to image rendition.

The Bottom Line

Then again, the Series E 75-150mm wasn’t designed or produced in the name of beauty or extravagance; it was produced in the name of practicality. It’s a lens that earns its keep in the field, is made to be shot hard, and rewards handsomely those willing to learn its available focal lengths inside and out. It’s perpetually ready for you to take the next shot no matter the situation, which is something prime lenses just can’t do.

But perhaps the best thing about this lens is that it’s still inexpensive. The market hasn’t really decided how to feel about this otherwise nondescript lens from the early 1980s, so prices still range anywhere from $25-80 USD. If you see one in the wild, snap it up and don’t think twice about it. There’s really not much that can go wrong with this lens other than zoom creep, so you’re virtually guaranteed a high-quality, compact short-telephoto lens for cheap. And in my humble, totally out-of-touch opinion, I don’t think prices on these are going “to the moon,” as the kids say. Old manual focus zoom lenses are like ’90s autofocus SLRs; they’re unglamorous, utilitarian, and just dorky enough to evade the Sauron’s eye of internet influence. I don’t even think a beanie-clad, Squarespace-sponsored film photography Youtuber could make these things hip enough to be out of reach, and that’s saying something (I think).

The Series E 75-150mm could be labeled a “sleeper lens” and even a “cult classic” but I think those terms betray the original intent of the lens. This wasn’t designed to be a lens for those in the know – it was supposed to be a lens for everybody. Its greatness was on display from the start, and it was once enjoyed by quite literally every class of shooter. So if you find one, pick one up, maybe even tell a friend about it. A product this plentiful, this good, and this useful is too rare to pass up, and too beautiful not to share.

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The post The Nikon Series E 75-150mm f/3.5 – The People’s Telephoto Lens appeared first on Casual Photophile.

Thankfully, the Minolta Five Hundred avoids every one of the issues that I experienced when reviewing the Rubinar One Thousand. It’s a well-made lens, in line with Minolta’s products in the Rokkor range. It makes pretty nice images when we get everything right (more on this later). And, uh, it didn’t explode in my hands. Big Bonus!

But of course, it’s not a perfect lens (not even close). Nor is it a must-buy. It’s a niche lens in a world in which vintage lenses are a niche within the niche of actual-camera photography. It’s a niche product within a niche segment of a niche hobby. What are the chances that anyone reads this? Well, as I said in 2014 when I started this website, let’s write it anyway!

What is the Minolta RF Rokkor-X 500mm F/8?

Sports and wildlife photographers need long lenses. No getting around that. And for many, 500mm is the perfect focal length. It allows the photographer to get close without being close – useful when the subject is on a far-flung football field or has sharp claws. But 500mm lenses are notoriously large and cumbersome, which is especially troublesome for wildlife photographers out in the field. Here’s where the Minolta RF Rokkor-X 500mm F/8 (and any other catadioptric lens) shines.

Catadioptric lenses are colloquially known as “mirror lenses.” They use a form of the Cassegrain reflector in their design, meaning that the optical assembly uses a primary concave mirror and a secondary convex mirror to multiply the focal length of the lens. This design also has the important benefit of reducing the physical length of the optical assembly. A normal super-tele lens can never be as small or light as an equivalent focal length mirror lens, and that’s the big selling point. 

But there are drawbacks when this design is incorporated into a photographic lens. Quite a few drawbacks, actually.

To start, the centrally-mounted mirror assembly precludes inclusion of an adjustable diaphragm. The lens’ aperture is therefore fixed (in the case of the Minolta 500mm at F/8). Adjustments to light pouring in through the lens must be handled via neutral density filters, usually installed at the back element of the lens. This means that anytime we want to adjust light without changing shutter speed we need to remove our lens – not ideal in pressurized shoots.

The fixed aperture combined with the super-long focal length also means that mirror lenses typically have incredibly shallow depth-of-field (more pronounced at closer focus distances). This can make contextual photographs of any subject closer than the horizon a challenge. 

Lastly, due to the mirror assembly, out-of-focus elements of a frame can be extremely distracting and even take on a iris-shaped bokeh. For the obvious look, many people call this “donut-bokeh.” Some shooters like the look, some don’t, but it’s distracting in any photo in which the intended subject is anything but the bokeh.

Minolta made a number of mirror lenses throughout their time as an optical powerhouse. During the manual-focus SR-mount period from which today’s lens hails, they offered four – the excellent and much more expensive RF Rokkor-X 250mm F/5.6, the RF Rokkor-X 500mm F/8 reviewed here, the rare and semi-expensive RF Rokkor-X 800mm F8, and the back-breaking and ultra-rare RF Rokkor-X 1600 F/11.

The Minolta 500mm originally released for Minolta’s manual-focus SR-mount and received a revision at some point in its lifespan (this added a slightly longer removable lens hood – I’m not sure if the optical formula was changed, but I doubt it). Later the lens was converted to Minolta’s AF mount when the brand launched their autofocus cameras (incidentally it was the first auto-focus 500mm mirror lens ever made).

It’s an all-metal lens with excellent feel, a generously large focus ring, and beautifully milled components throughout. Filters are attached at the back (39mm filters, with a nice little Minolta wrench for removing them). Angle of view is a stunning 5 degrees (so, tripod for best results). Focus throw is long. Minimum focus distance is 4 meters. Teleconverters can be attached to double or triple the focal length (this makes the lens basically unusable).

True to type, the Minolta RF Rokkor-X 500mm F/8 is a very compact, lightweight, well-made lens. Its focal length is long. It gets close. It feels good. It excels in all of the ways that mirror lenses excel. And to be fair, it struggles in all of the ways that mirror lenses struggle.

Shooting and Image Quality

Those of us unaccustomed to the 500mm focal length (and not many among us is) will experience a significant adjustment period when shooting a lens this long. It’s hard to convey just how close 500mm gets us to our subject. The best way I know to illustrate the point is with, surprise surprise, photos!

The photo below, of an aging, beach-parked Jeep SUV (from a time when the term SUV was new), isn’t what it seems. I saw the old machine sitting there in the sand, the sun shining off its flank, the ocean rippling in the background, a bridge diminishing in the distance. It looked like a promising shot! I framed up with my Sony a7 and the 500mm, and noticing that only the side-view mirror and driver’s door of the truck was in frame, I knew immediately that I’d need to take a few steps back. I backpedaled across a parking lot and framed again. Still too close. I tramped across a sand dune and tried again. Only the middle third of the truck was in shot. I turned and walked further, this time going literally as far as I could go without wading into the Atlantic. I framed the shot for the final time – not far enough. Only half of the truck was in frame. In the end, I took three photos in portrait orientation – the front third, middle, and rear third of the truck – and stitched the three images together in Lightroom. For reference, I’ve also included a photo that I made of just how far away I needed to be to make this shot (which was, remember, three shots stitched together).

The final result is fine. A decent photo. But truthfully it was a pain to make, and an eye-opening example of just how ludicrously close a 500mm lens gets us to our subject. And, if I’m being honest, I believe I could have made a much better photo of this particular scene with something a bit less extreme (I immediately found myself wishing for the Sony FE STF 100mm F/2.8 which I reviewed some time ago).

That feeling followed throughout my time shooting the Minolta 500. Always too close. Always hard to frame. Always a little shaky. Always a bit out of focus. Always wishing I was using a different lens, a different focal length. Portraits are hard to make. I had to stand back so far from my subject that communication had me acting like an old-time landing signal officer from a World War II era aircraft carrier.

Image quality with the Rokkor is decent, compared with other lens types. There’s significant light falloff at the edges of the frame, most noticeable when the subject is on a consistent field of light and color, as in my shots of the moon in daytime. We can see that the sky around the edges of the frame is considerably darker than in the center. There’s no chromatic aberration. Sharpness is pretty good, not great (again, I’m comparing to more “normal” lenses – meaning non-catadioptric lenses and lenses of less extreme focal lengths). Bokeh is extremely busy, even when we’re not seeing iris-shaped specular highlights, an unavoidable characteristic of mirror lens design. Background really must be fairly uniform to create distraction-free subject isolation, a rare luxury.

Focusing can be a real challenge, since depth-of-field is razor thin at any distance closer than infinity. And even focusing to infinity isn’t easy, since the lens was designed to focus past infinity to account for expansion and contraction of the mirror elements based on temperature. Camera shake is a real problem as well, due to the extremely narrow field of view. Yes, this is a lens which demands precise focus, good eyes, and a decent tripod.

Straight out of my digital camera, images are a bit flat and lacking in punch. I punch them up in Lightroom with some slider adjustments to exposure, contrast, clarity, highlights, and shadows. In addition, I’ve adjusted my white balance (something I do with every photo made with my Sony). The final results are a mix of good and pretty good. I don’t think I made a remarkable photo with this lens. None of them stick out to me as incredible works, even judged against my own rather low standards of excellence.

There’s not much else to say. It’s a decent image-maker by the metric of image quality. Not amazing. Not bad. But it’s not really fair to compare images from this mirror lens to more normal, everyday lenses. The real trick of the mirror lens is, of course, that long focal length. When you need a 500mm focal length, no other focal length will do. Teleconverters on better, shorter lenses will diminish those lenses’ image quality to a point that makes these lenses worse than Minolta’s 500mm (at least when we’re measuring vintage lens to vintage lens). So, we need a mirror lens. And measuring the Rokkor mirror-lens against other mirror-lenses is really the only measure that matters.

In contemporary reviews, the Minolta RF Rokkor-X 500mm F/8 measured up well against its competition, landing somewhere directly in the middle of the pack. The German photo magazine, Color Foto, tested this and a number of other mirror-lenses back-to-back in 1980. The Minolta performed better than comparable lenses from Yashica, Sigma, and Tamron. However, it performed poorer than 500mm lenses from Nikon, Canon, and Zeiss.

Closing Thoughts

I enjoyed using the Minolta RF Rokkor-X 500mm F/8. It’s a beautifully-made lens. It feels great in the hands, and allows us to make images that very few other lenses can. However, it is simply too specialized for my use. I’m not a wildlife photographer. Little birds aren’t interesting to me, and large birds have large beaks which frighten me. I’m not really interested in taking photos of sports, and you can only shoot so many shots of the moon before getting bored (approximately five, it seems).

But the Rokkor 500 does present a pretty good value proposition. As far as performance, it’s a middle-of-the-pack lens when compared against its contemporary competition. It’s similarly priced, as well. Not the most expensive vintage mirror lens, and not the cheapest. And I guess something can be said, after my last experience with a mirror lens, for the fact that it didn’t self-destruct.

Buy your own Minolta RF Rokkor-X 500mm F/8 here

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My second discovery is a little-known fact about lens design – a fact which, as far as I can tell, does not appear in any English-language book or on any website. The Tele-Elmar is a Sonnar design; a revolutionary lens formula invented in 1929 by Ludwig Bertele of Zeiss, and which has, since then, acquired a bit of a cult following.

My third discovery is a personal one. I always thought I wasn’t much of a telephoto person. I still don’t think I am, but lately I’ve been using this lens more than I normally do – partly for writing this review, and partly as a way to safely practice street photography in a time of physical distancing. And as I use it more and more I’m learning how to “see” with a medium-tele lens, and discovering more about what it can offer.

A Second Lens for My M3

My Leica M3, which I got at an estate auction, came with two lenses – a Leitz Summicron 50mm f/2 (version 1, 1956) and a Leitz Elmar 90mm f/4 (version 1, 1938). I love the Summicron and I intend never to sell it, but I never quite bonded with the Elmar.

The uncoated pre-war Elmar, though in good optical condition for its age, produced images with less contrast than I like. Besides, the 90mm focal length is a bit too close to 50mm. I dislike carrying gear, so if my second lens doesn’t offer something substantially different or exciting, the temptation is to leave it at home. I ended up selling the Elmar to someone who will hopefully use it more than I did.

For a while I flirted with the idea of a one-camera-one-lens approach with just the M3 and the Summicron 50. When you have what one writer described as “the finest photographic kit available to mankind,” it seems almost greedy to want more. The notion also appealed to my minimalist tastes. But on the other hand, my minimalism is in constant conflict with my interest in vintage cameras and lenses, and in this case the latter won out. Besides, I reasoned, I’m not getting the most out of an interchangeable-lens rangefinder if I don’t have lenses to interchange. Under this pretense, the quest for a new second lens had begun.

I may not have bonded with the Elmar 90, but it helped me figure out what I did want. I had three criteria – a longer focal length offering something more obviously different to the 50mm, a more contrasty rendering, and a reasonable price.

The first criterion helpfully narrowed the search to just one focal length. 135mm is the next step up from 90mm in the Leica M system, and focal lengths longer than 135mm can only be used with a Visoflex. Further research (by which I mean too much time on review websites, forum threads and eBay listings) revealed that the Leitz Tele-Elmar 135mm f/4 also met my other two criteria regarding optical quality and price. 

Optical Quality

Before I talk about the lens itself, here’s a bit about the man who designed it – Dr Walter Mandler, one of the most revered lens designers of the 20^th century. Mandler was born in Germany in 1922, three years before the Leica I was introduced at the Leipzig Spring Fair, revolutionising photography forever. In his mid-twenties, as his friend recounts, Mandler was offered a sales position at Leitz. He turned it down and asked to work in the optical design department instead. His interviewers asked him if he knew anything about optics. “No,” he said, “but I want to learn.”

And learn he did, going on to design such classics as the Summilux 35mm f/1.4 (1961) and the Noctilux 50mm f/1 (1976). It is a mark of how good these lenses were that they both remained optically unchanged and in continuous production for over three decades, eventually being replaced by newer versions with aspherical glass, the use of which was not practical in Mandler’s day.

Likewise, the Tele-Elmar 135mm f/4, introduced in 1965, had a production run of 33 years – an eternity in lens-design terms. Consider what that means; the intervening decades saw unprecedented advances in computer-assisted design, exotic glass, aspherical and floating elements, multi-coating and apochromatic correction. The fact that in all this time, no optical updates were deemed necessary is a testament to the enduring quality of the original design.

The Tele-Elmar is certainly not as well-known as some of Mandler’s other creations, and has far fewer reviews on the internet. But the reviews that do exist are overwhelmingly positive. In The Leica Compendium, Leica historian and optics expert Erwin Puts wrote that with this lens “Leitz equalled and in some areas surpassed the Zeiss Sonnar 1:4/135mm, which had set the Olympian record for a lens of this specification.” Elsewhere he says that the Tele-Elmar design “reached the theoretical optimum” attainable in those days, and that its performance even by modern-day standards is “outstanding.” Likewise, Jonathan Eastland’s book describes the lens as “unsurpassed in its class for optical performance … still one of the best lenses in the entire Leica system.”

What does such performance look like? Even in my hands, it looks like this.

By the way, the photo above was taken on Ilford HP5+ which is a fast (400 ISO) film, and “scanned” at home with a DSLR. So the limiting factors are film grain and scan quality, rather than the resolution of the lens itself.

Lab tests confirm what the photographs show. The Tele-Elmar’s successor is the APO-Telyt 135mm f/3.4. Introduced in 1998 and still in production, it offers only marginally superior performance. Mandler’s design, even after all these years, is almost impossible to improve upon. A comparison of the MTF charts available on Marco Cavina’s website is telling. (I rendered the MTF charts based on technical literature; they are a close approximation and perfect accuracy is not guaranteed.)

If you’re unfamiliar with MTF charts, Lens Rentals has a good introduction. In short, higher lines are better; the theoretically perfect MTF response is a straight, horizontal line at 100%. In this case, for both lenses, the MTF for 10 lp/mm (red lines) which indicate overall contrast stay above 90% from the centre right up to the corners.

The MTF charts also show that in both lenses, the sagittal and tangential lines (solid and dotted lines) stay close together, indicating that the lenses are well-corrected for astigmatism and have smooth, pleasing bokeh.

It is only in the 40 lp/mm MTF (green lines), which indicates ability to resolve extremely fine detail, that the APO-Telyt has a slight edge in wide-open performance. But at this point we are truly splitting hairs. In fact, I would argue that in real-life scenarios, factors like critical focusing and minute camera shake would be more significant than the marginal gain in resolving power offered by the APO-Telyt. Even so, by f/5.6 the Tele-Elmar has almost caught up. By f/8 I would guess there is no meaningful difference. Crucially, with a price tag of over $4,000 the APO-Telyt is about 20 times more expensive than a used Tele-Elmar.

But we don’t need MTF charts to tell us that the Tele-Elmar has excellent contrast; we can just look at pictures. The example below shows a contact-sheet with two photos taken in quick succession with the Elmar 90 (which I sold) and the Tele-Elmar. The Tele-Elmar 135mm, as you can see, achieves greater contrast without sacrificing detail in the highlights or shadows. That’s my personal preference, though some people like the pre-war Elmar’s gentle rendering.

Price

Which brings me to my third criterion – price. At the time of writing, the most recent Tele-Elmar auctioned on eBay UK (small dent on the lens hood, but otherwise in seemingly good condition) sold for £127. I paid just a bit more for mine when I bought it two years ago. Such amounts may well net you a body and two primes in some other systems, but in the Leica M universe, the Tele-Elmar counts as a tremendous bargain – especially in light of its superb performance, which gives the expensive APO-Telyt a run for its money.

What about other alternatives? The Elmarit 135mm f/2.8 sells for about the same price as the Tele-Elmar, and the older Elmar 135mm f/4 and Hektor 135mm f/4.5 lenses can be even cheaper. I’ve not used these lenses myself, but reviews as well as the test data in Erwin Puts’ Leica Compendium suggest they are optically inferior to the Tele-Elmar (comparisons are also available on the Apotelyt website). Finally there are a couple of non-Leitz options – the Nikkor-Q.C 135mm f/4 and Canon Serenar 135mm f4. These came in Leica thread mount variants and can be used on M bodies with an appropriate adaptor. Unfortunately I’m not in a position to compare; I haven’t used these lenses myself, nor have I seen detailed reviews or technical data.

Size and Weight

Compactness is also important to me, and the Tele-Elmar happens to be smaller than the Elmarit, Elmar or Hektor. Unlike the other three, the Tele-Elmar is a “true” tele lens – that is, the distance from its front element to film plane is shorter than its focal length. 

That said, the lens is not particularly compact by rangefinder standards. It’s 112mm long and weighs in at 510g, which is not surprising as it’s all metal and glass. The APO-Telyt is slightly smaller and lighter, but as I said, far more expensive. Still, size is relative. The Tele-Elmar is diminutive compared to a 135mm full-frame DSLR lens. And it doesn’t feel particularly nose-heavy on my M3, perhaps because the body weighs slightly more than the lens.

Version History

The Leitz Tele-Elmar 135mm f/4 with an optical design of 5 elements in 3 groups was introduced in 1965, replacing the Elmar 135mm f/4 (4 elements in 4 groups). For the next 33 years the Tele-Elmar went through some external changes, but it remained optically unchanged until it was replaced by the APO-Telyt 135mm f/3.4 in 1998.

Collectors distinguish between two versions of the Tele-Elmar, helpfully but unimaginatively called version 1 and version 2. My copy is a version 1 from 1965, the very first year of production. It is the rarer “red scale” version of which about 3,000 were made out of a total of over 28,000 Tele-Elmar lenses (versions 1 and 2 combined).

“Red scale” denotes a distance scale with feet marked in red; by the end of 1965 this was replaced by yellow markings. I have no special fascination for the red scale – in fact, I think the yellow scale is slightly easier to read – but red scale versions seem to fetch higher prices in auctions. I didn’t know this when I bought the lens, but luckily it was still quite cheap.

My copy has a knurled and scalloped focusing ring. This was replaced in 1970 by a ring which is knurled but not scalloped (fortunately, I am not yet at the stage where I care deeply about such things).

Version 2 introduced in 1992 saw more significant changes, though the optical formula, as I said, stayed the same. Among other things, it gained a built-in telescopic hood, a 46mm (instead of the earlier 39mm) filter size, and about 40g in additional weight. Version 2 is rarer and also commands significantly higher prices. I prefer version 1 because it is smaller and lighter, and the filter size matches that of my Summicron 50.

Visoflex Head

Version 1 has a removable lens head. To remove it, grip the aperture ring, turn it to f/4 and then continue turning firmly until the head unscrews (to reattach, repeat in reverse). The head was designed for use with the Visoflex, a mirror-and-pentaprism housing which can be inserted between a Leica lens and rangefinder body to convert it to an SLR. I have never used a Visoflex and nor do I intend to, but if you’re interested in going down this route, the Leica Wiki has more information on the Visoflex and other accessories.

In addition, the head has a 39mm Leica thread mount which can be mounted with adapters on a DSLR – an option that is not available with most other rangefinder lenses due to their short flange focal distance. Since many enlargers (including mine) have a 39mm thread mount, the head can also be used for darkroom printing.

Build Quality and Ergonomics  

The Leitz Tele-Elmar 135mm f/4 is a lens from the tail-end of the rangefinder’s golden age. In 1965, SLRs were growing in popularity, but their dominance was not yet complete. Leica’s premier lens designer Walter Mandler was churning out timeless classics seemingly at his leisure. The Tele-Elmar’s construction reflects the precision, pride and obsessive attention to detail that we associate with Leica lenses from this period.

My version 1 lens is all metal and glass. It has a milled aperture ring with half-stop clicks from f/4 to f/22. There are 10 aperture blades for well-rounded out-of-focus highlights, and a beautifully finished friction-fit lens cap – metal with an inner lining of felt. The focus ring goes from 1.5 metres to infinity with a relatively long 180° throw, and there is an unusual depth-of-field scale in an inverted triangle. All markings are finely engraved and painted. I am not very good with adjectives, but liberally sprinkle words like smooth, precise and well-damped over the foregoing description and you will have the general idea.

In short, the Tele-Elmar is an optical and mechanical tour de force, at a price which is almost incredible by Leica standards.

The Sonnar Cult

My second discovery around the Tele-Elmar came after I had owned the lens for over a year. In October last year, my friend Bronwen and I went to an Extinction Rebellion action in London. She took several good photos with her grandfather’s Praktica SLR, but one stood out – a Red Rebel in full protest regalia (she kindly allowed me to reproduce it here). We all know that a good photo needs much more than a good lens, but the rendering of that image caught my eye. The lens she used was a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 135mm f/3.5.

Sonnar is a name steeped in legend. Invented in 1929 by the optical genius Ludwig Bertele of Zeiss, the original Sonnar was a fast 50mm lens for 35mm cameras. Since then, many other Zeiss lenses in various focal lengths have been based on the Sonnar formula, which has also been associated with Hasselblad, Rollei, Linhof and other giants of 20^th century photography. Companies such as Nikon, Canon and Jupiter, have also made “Sonnar type” lenses, though they could not use the trademark.

The “normal Sonnar” eventually lost out in popularity to the Double-Gauss design, like that found in my Summicron 50 and in the vast majority of fast 50mm lenses. Nevertheless, the Sonnar still inspires a small but passionate following among rangefinder users; after all, the rangefinder itself is a bit of a cult compared to the more “mainstream” SLR. The Sonnar, you might say, is the Dvorak to the Double-Gauss’ Qwerty.

On the other hand, the Sonnar design quietly persisted in longer focal lengths, both for rangefinders (like the Nikkor PC 85mm f/2 made famous by David Duncan) and for SLRs (like my friend’s CZJ Sonnar 135mm, manufactured until the late 1980s).

Leica’s Secret Sonnar

Anyhow, after seeing the Red Rebel photo, I looked up the lens diagram for the CZJ Sonnar and immediately noticed that it was similar to my own 135mm, the Tele-Elmar. (I rendered the lens diagrams based on technical literature; they are a close approximation, but accuracy is not guaranteed.)

Looking at the two lens diagrams, the main difference is that the first (leftmost) element of the CZJ Sonnar becomes in the Tele-Elmar a two-element group. Beyond that, both lenses have a second group made up of a positive (converging) and an unusually thick negative (diverging) element. Next you have the aperture stop, and finally a positive meniscus element. In other words, the CZJ Sonnar is a 4/3 construction (that is, 4 elements in 3 groups) while the Tele-Elmar is a 5/3, but the similarities are stronger than the differences. This was intriguing. Was my Tele-Elmar in fact a Sonnar in disguise? Or was it disqualified from the Sonnar club by its two-element group, or some other subtle difference which had escaped my untrained eye?

In search of answers, I turned to Erwin Puts and Jonathan Eastland’s books on the Leica system. Unfortunately, comprehensive as they are, neither of them made any mention of a Leitz–Sonnar crossover lens. Next, I turned to the internet.

Deep into Google search results, I found a 2006 forum thread where one user noted that the Tele-Elmar is “very close” to the Hasselblad Sonnar 250mm f/5.6 (a lens which incidentally was used on Apollo 11 and other lunar missions). But the latter, like the CZJ Sonnar 135mm, is a 4/3 construction. But we all know how reliable forum threads are. I continued to dig deeper.

Finally, with much help from Google Translate, I found the confirmation I was seeking in a treatise by Italian optics expert Marco Cavina (and later also on a German website). Not only does Cavina confirm my suspicion that the Tele-Elmar is a tipo Sonnar, he also notes its close resemblance to the taking lens of the 1959 Tele Rolleiflex – a Zeiss Sonnar 135mm f/4 with 5 elements in 3 groups. In other words, just like the Tele-Elmar. (As before, I rendered the lens diagrams based on technical literature; they are a close approximation, but accuracy is not guaranteed.)

Incidentally, I have found very little information on the Tele Rollei taking lens; who designed it, how it performs, and whether it directly inspired Mandler’s Tele-Elmar. If you know anything about it, please let me know.

Cavina’s insight also offers a clue to the Tele-Elmar’s startling performance which I talked about earlier. What we have is essentially a medium-format lens designed for a 6×6 image circle, being used to make 35mm images. It is quite literally over-qualified. No wonder there is virtually no vignetting or distortion, not even wide open.

The Sonnar DNA is also surely responsible for the Tele-Elmar’s optical quality. I mentioned that the Double-Gauss design eventually became the industry standard for fast normal lenses. This was in part due to some of the inherent “flaws” in the Sonnar design (though fans would say the flaws are precisely what give Sonnars their unique character). However, in a medium-telephoto like the Tele-Elmar, many of these flaws fall away. For example, as Kats Ikeda explains, the Sonnar’s higher field aberrations have less of an effect at longer focal lengths. What’s more, the Sonnar’s advantages now come to the fore – compactness, pleasing bokeh and excellent correction of higher-order spherical aberration and coma (recall the Tele-Elmar’s sweet MTF graphs).

So this was my second discovery: the Leitz Tele-Elmar 135mm f/4 is based on an optical formula by one of the greatest designers at Zeiss, modified by one of the greatest designers at Leica. And now fallen into my hands – what a comedown! But now that I have it, I fully intend to make the most of it. The lens renders beautifully in both black-and-white, as well as colour.

Distortion, Vignetting and Bokeh

The Apotelyt website reports that distortion (pincushion) is less than 1%, and vignetting, even wide open, is less than half a stop. In other words, these aberrations for all practical purposes are non-existent. In the gasholder photo below, straight lines look dead straight (I added a yellow guideline as a reference), and in the photo of the horse, or indeed the Dante statue above, the sky looks evenly illuminated. This is also borne out by Gerd Waloszek’s vignette tests with a digital Leica body (which often behave differently from film).

Sonnar lenses are famous for the quality of their bokeh – both the smoothness of the bokeh itself and the harmonious transition from the in-focus to out-of-focus areas – and the Tele-Elmar is no exception. This is in evidenced in several of my other photos too, but here are two which nicely illustrate both foreground and background bokeh.

In the first photo, both the near and the far wall of the cage are smoothly defocused and the bokeh is not “wiry” at all (even though it is literally wires, ha). The magnified detail from the second photo, taken at a climate change protest in Copenhagen, contains some clues as to why the bokeh looks so pleasant. The out-of-focus highlights look evenly illuminated, with no hint of the “soap-bubble effect” caused by over-corrected spherical aberration.

There’s also no hint of the elliptical “cat’s eye” effect caused by optical vignetting, and thanks to the 10 aperture blades the “bokeh balls” look circular (not polygonal) even though the photo was taken stopped down to f/5.6. (By the way, none of this is to suggest that some types of bokeh are objectively better. The Tele-Elmar satisfies the classical requirements for good bokeh, but lenses with “bad bokeh” – swirliness, soap bubble effects, and so on – can also be used to great effect.)

The Many Uses of a Medium-Tele

The quality of its bokeh makes the Leitz Tele-Elmar 135mm f/4 a great choice for a portrait lens. Some photographers prefer portrait lenses in the 75-105mm range, but for me the Tele-Elmar 135 is the ideal complement to my Summicron 50, which I use when I want to include more of the subject environment.

A medium-tele is good for photos of animals, enabling me to shoot from further away (one of the cat photos got badly scratched when I was loading film into the developing tank, but I like it enough that I decided to share it anyway). For the same reason, the lens is also good for shooting sports and performances from the sidelines.

The one thing I didn’t use it much for is street photography, where I tend to rely mainly on a 28mm and a 50mm; I’ve never felt comfortable photographing people from afar. But I am in India during the lockdown, and when I go for my daily physically-distanced walk, I often carry the Tele-Elmar. The 135mm focal length, I’ve discovered, is perfect for head-and-shoulders portraits from 2 metres away, like the first photo of a car mechanic sitting outside his shop.

By using it more I’m also learning to “see” like a medium-tele lens – noticing small, everyday details which I might have otherwise missed. (“A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera,” as Dorothea Lange famously said.) I’ve never been much of a still-life photographer, but now with the lockdown and limited opportunities for human interaction, I’m exploring a form of “found photography”.

Downsides

So far, this review has been unrelentingly positive, but it’s only fair to note that the Tele-Elmar is not without some downsides.

First, I personally haven’t used it on any camera other than my Leica M3, but I understand that framing and composing with a 135mm lens on other Leica M cameras is inconvenient if not downright unfeasible (though one way around this is to use viewfinder magnifiers). Unlike an SLR, a rangefinder’s viewfinder typically does not “zoom in” when you mount a longer lens. The M3 has the highest finder magnification (0.91x) of all Leica M cameras, and even then, the 135mm framelines are quite small. In the photo below, taken through my M3 finder, the large rectangle is for 50mm, and the smaller rectangle in the middle is for 135mm. You can see that there is a bit of viewfinder blockage from the lens, but it does not impinge on the 135mm frame.

In other models, the 135mm framelines are even smaller; in fact, the M6 TTL 0.58 doesn’t have them at all. To be fair, this drawback, as well as the next, is a limitation of the rangefinder design itself and not this particular lens.

Second downside, focusing a longer lens is also difficult with a rangefinder. For example, at a distance of 15 metres with a 50mm lens at f/4 the total depth of field is over 44 metres. With a 135mm lens at f/4, depth of field is less than 3 metres – very little margin for error! And as we know, the rangefinder does not “zoom in”, so the subject appears small, which makes it even harder to focus.

In addition to having the highest magnification, the M3 also has the longest effective base length (62.33) of all Leica M cameras, which translates to higher focusing accuracy. Even so, and perhaps because I often shoot moving subjects, I miss focus more often than I do with my Summicron 50. But I’ve learned to adjust: if it’s a critical photo and I have the opportunity, I refocus and take a second shot. For the same reason, rangefinder calibration is also more critical – wider lenses are more forgiving of slight misadjustments.

Third downside, a maximum aperture of f/4 is relatively slow. Then again, the fastest 135mm rangefinder lens ever made, as far as I’m aware, is the Elmarit f/2.8, which is only one stop faster and significantly bulkier than the Tele-Elmar. If you’re interested in a faster lens primarily for bokeh, one stop for a tele lens is not that significant. For example, at a typical “portrait distance” of 2 metres, depth of field at f/2.8 and f/4 is not that different – 80 cm and 110 cm respectively. In any case, for me “quantity” of bokeh is less important than quality, and on that count the Tele-Elmar delivers in spades.

Of course, the traditional raison d’être for faster lenses is light-gathering ability. The rule of thumb is that lenses can be safely handheld at speeds faster than the reciprocal of their focal length (e.g. faster than 1/135 sec for the Tele-Elmar), though this depends on the camera, how much coffee you’ve drunk and various other factors. I don’t drink much coffee and the Leica M3 has a soft shutter and no mirror slap. The sandal photo I posted above was shot at 1/30 sec, handheld. One time I tried to photograph an artist restoring a painting at 1/8 sec, and it didn’t work out (see below). Then again, shooting Velvia 50 handheld in a dark church is just asking for trouble.

My last and perhaps least important criticism is that the Tele-Elmar is not, to my eyes, a particularly pretty lens – certainly not by Leica standards. My first-generation Summicron 50 is a jewel-like delight in chrome and glass which makes the Tele-Elmar look industrial by comparison. But when the Tele-Elmar makes such beautiful photos, do we really care? I actually do, just a little bit – but I’m shallow like that.

Final Thoughts

The Leitz Tele-Elmar 135mm f/4 is an outstanding lens by one of the greatest designers at Leica, based on an optical formula by one of the greatest designers at Zeiss – a bit like Hendrix covering Dylan. Optically and mechanically the lens is near perfect. A Leica brochure from 1973 claims that “the maximum aperture is also the optimum aperture for resolving power, contrast transfer and colour correction.” If true, the Tele-Elmar represents that holy grail of optical design: a lens which cannot be improved by stopping down.

That said, the lens is not without drawbacks – mainly the relatively slow speed, and the general difficulty of framing and focusing tele lenses with a rangefinder. If you want a 135mm M-mount lens, and can adapt to or accept these limitations, the price makes it a no-brainer. The Tele-Elmar remains, as one reviewer put it, “one of the last true bargains of Leica optics”. It also makes me look like a better photographer than I am.

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Before we get too far, let’s quickly digest the alphabet soup of that lens name. The numerous acronyms tell us that it’s a full frame Sony E mount lens (FE) in the brand’s premium G Master range (GM), and that it’s got Optical Steady Shot image stabilization (OSS). Okay, but the most important acronym of all is STF, which stands for “Smooth Trans Focus.” And it is this feature alone which sets the Sony FE 100mm F/2.8 STF GM OSS apart from almost every other lens.

What is a Smooth Trans Focus (STF) Lens?

A Smooth Trans Focus lens is a type of lens which uses an apodization (APO) filter to create exceptionally smooth bokeh (rounded out-of-focus elements) in both the foreground and background of a photograph. The apodization filter is a neutral-grey tinted lens element positioned internally, near to the lens diaphragm. The tint is graduated in such a way that it’s clear in the center and becomes darker toward the edges of the element. This is the magic glass that blurs the bokeh.

The easiest way for us to demonstrate the APO filter’s effect is with highlight bokeh, or out of focus points of light. Where normal lenses will render out of focus points of light as circles or ellipticals with clearly defined edges (commonly called bokeh balls), the STF lens renders these as perfectly round blurry blobs with less defined edges. The same effect is applied to all out of focus elements of a shot, not just bright light sources of course, but seeing the way that the APO filter renders these hard points of light is instructive. It allows us to visualize just how well this lens and its apodization filter blurs all of the blurry bits compared with normal lenses.

STF technology was originally invented and patented by Minolta in the 1980s, but was not made available in a photographic consumer lens until 1999 when the brand released the Minolta 135mm F/2.8 STF lens for their Alpha SLR/DSLR mount. When Sony acquired Minolta and their patents in 2006, the 135mm STF continued to be produced and sold under the new Sony name. In 2017, Sony released the lens which we’re discussing today, the inarguably better Sony FE 100mm F/2.8 STF GM OSS for their E Mount digital mirrorless system cameras.

The genius of the STF lens is that it not only enhances the blur of the out-of-focus areas of an image, but it also renders a perfectly sharp image on the point of focus. This perfectly sharp plane of focus differentiates STF lenses from soft focus lenses, like the $7,195 Leica Thambar-M 90mm F/2.2, which blur the entire image. Additionally, the STF lens’ ability to enhance the blur of both the foreground and background at the same time differentiates the STF lens from so-called defocus control lenses, like the Nikon 135mm F/2 DC lens, which can only enhance the blur of either the foreground or the background, but not both at once.

And that’s the real selling point of the STF lens. It’s not so much the bokeh alone, though the bokeh really is unbelievably refined. And it’s not just the sharpness of the in-focus elements, though they are quite literally the sharpest of any lens I’ve ever used. It’s the perfect juxtaposition of the two qualities. The STF lens excels over other lenses because it provides exceptional bokeh without sacrificing sharpness in the in-focus elements of the shot. There is, in fact, no lens which produces such an incredible combination of in-focus sharpness and out-of-focus blur. There just isn’t.

Quick Specifications

Let’s quickly get through some technical details, and then we can move on to the fun stuff. Being part of the G Master series of Sony E Mount lenses, I expect top shelf specs. The 100mm STF doesn’t disappoint. This lens has everything one could want in a pro-spec lens today. Here’s the list –

• • Native Format – Sony E Mount full frame
  • Focal Length – 100mm (150mm on APS-C cameras)
  • Optical Formula – 13 elements in 10 groups (excluding apodization element); 1 aspherical lens element; ED glass; Nano AR coating
  • Angle of View – 23º (full frame) 16º (APS-C)
  • Maximum Aperture – F/2.8 (T/5.6)
  • Minimum Aperture – F/20 (T/22)
  • Aperture Blades and Shape – 11, circular
  • Aperture Control – Yes, aperture ring with click stops and de-click switch
  • Focus Modes – Automatic (Direct Drive SSM); manual (electronic) with focusing ring; focus position control for close ups, and mid-to-infinity; focus hold button
  • Minimum Focus Distance – 2.79 ft/0.85 m (at “0.85 m–∞” position); 1.87 ft/0.57 m (at “0.57 m–1.0 m” position)
  • Maximum Magnification Ratio – 0.14 (at “0.85 m–∞” position); 0.25 (at “0.57 m–1.0 m” position)
  • Weather and Dust Resistance – Yes
  • Filter Diameter – 72mm
  • Hood Type – Round, Bayonet
  • Size (Diameter x Length) – 3 3/8 x 4 3/4″ (85.2 x 118.1 mm)
  • Weight – 24.7 oz (700 grams)

The F-stop and the T-stop

The lens’ maximum f-stop is F/2.8, but its maximum t-stop is F/5.6. There’s some confusion around what this means, but it’s pretty easy to understand. Here are two quick definitions to get us started.

An f-stop (or f-number) is the ratio of a lens’ focal length to the dimension of its entrance pupil. It is a dimensionless number used to express lens speed in photography. Even if you or I don’t necessarily understand the math behind f-numbers, most of us geeky photographers at least understand, generally, the difference between F/1.8 and F/8 on our lenses and how these numbers impact depth-of-field and light transmission. Assuming we understand f-numbers, t-numbers are fairly easy to understand, too. A t-number is an f-number adjusted to account for light transmission. So if we remember that the apodization filter inside an STF lens is essentially a tinted piece of glass, it’s easy to understand why the light transmitted at the lens’ f-number of F/2.8 might be equivalent to a t-number of T/5.6.

What’s happening is that we’re losing some light as it passes through the apodization filter. So shooting wide open at the lens’ maximum f-stop of F/2.8 correlates to a t-stop of F/5.6, and this progresses in a curve as the aperture is closed with the f-numbers and t-numbers eventually converging to the same value. Since the apodization filter in the lens is graduated, with the neutral-grey tint diminishing to clear glass toward the center of the element, by F/8 the f-number and t-number values eventually match. From F/8 and smaller, f-stops match the t-stops.

One important note – the f-numbers and t-numbers are connected of course, but not in the way that some people say. It’s not right to say that the Sony FE 100mm F/2.8 STF GM OSS isn’t an F/2.8 lens, or that its maximum aperture is really F/5.6, because that’s the t-number and only refers to light transmission, not depth-of-field. A simple way to think of it is that the lens, when shot wide open, has the depth-of-field of an F/2.8 lens but the light collecting ability of an F/5.6 lens. While some reviewers have cited this as the lens’ Achilles heel, I just don’t see it. We’ll get into this in-depth later on, but the quick and easy note – the lens gathers plenty of light.

Practical Use and Ergonomics

The lens is substantial in both size and weight, with an enormous and beautiful front element. The barrel is made of metal, as is the mount. The filter threads and rotating rings (aperture, focus control, focus ring) are made of plastic, with the focus ring lined with a beautifully knurled rubber grip. There’s a weather seal at the mount, and the lens is generally dust and splash proof. It’s luxuriously built and meticulously finished. If you like lenses, you’ll love this lens.

Practical use is effortless. In automatic focus and automatic shooting modes, it’s a point and shoot lens. When we switch to manual controls, things are almost as simple. Aperture can be controlled via the camera body, or via the dedicated aperture ring (this electronically controls the aperture inside). There’s a click control switch on the underside of the lens which allows us to de-click the aperture ring for a fluid rotation.

The manual focus ring is positioned near the front of the lens, and is light and easily rotated with a single finger. Focus is electronic, just like the aperture, fast and responsive. The focus lock button is positioned on the left hand side of the lens, perfectly placed under the thumb when the camera and lens are held in the customary shooting position. Also on the left side of the lens is the Optical Steady Shot image stabilization switch, and a manual focus/automatic focus switch. The focus distance selector ring is positioned near the lens mount. This ring moves the lens elements inside the body to allow close focusing from 0.57 to 1.0 meters.

Image Quality, Shooting, and Sample Shots

Arguably the only section of this lens review that matters, image quality from the Sony FE 100mm F/2.8 STF GM OSS is simply astounding. I’m not sure I’ve ever used a better lens, all things considered. MTF charts are boring, but they are instructive. The Sony MTF chart on this lens is damn near perfect. What more can I say? Just look at the photos.

If you’re interested in a short tele lens for general use, or in a dedicated portrait lens, or you just want perfect sharpness at the plane of focus and unbeatable bokeh everywhere else, this is the only lens you need for Sony E mount. Some people will say that “Lens X or Y makes bokeh that’s just as good.” and in some cases that’s true. But they’re missing the big picture. Other lenses might make equally pleasant bokeh shot wide open, but no other lens makes bokeh like this combined with such perfect sharpness at the plane of focus. And no normal lens can make bokeh this beautiful when stopped down one, two, or even three stops. The blur that this lens can make shot at F/8 is better than some standard F/1.4 prime lenses I’ve used when shot wide open!

There are virtually no optical anomalies to speak of. There’s no distortion that anyone would ever notice. There’s no vignetting. There’s no chromatic aberration (though there is a tiny bit of bokeh color fringing which almost nobody will ever notice). Flaring and ghosting is controlled better than any other lens I’ve used (though there are tiny, tiny flares when we point that big honkin’ lens element directly at the sun).

Shot wide open, we’re naturally seeing the lens’ best bokeh. Again, naturally, bokeh is best presented when we’re shooting subjects which are close. Different from most other lenses, even when we stop down the aperture we’re able to create exceptional bokeh. This is the benefit of the apodization filter. Even at F/8 I can make bokeh blur. That’s just not possible with normal lenses.

Sharpness is exceptional at any aperture, as mentioned many times already. When focusing on distant subjects, the entire field is sharp and contrasty. There’s excellent subject isolation as well, with a beautiful gradation between the point of focus and blurrier bits.

The relatively meager light transmission when shot wide open is often cited as a limiting factor compared with faster, non-STF prime lenses. While it’s obviously true that an F/1.8 will transmit more light wide open, I’m not sure it matters as much as people tend to say. I almost feel like this is an area where reviewers are looking to balance their praise of the lens against a drawback. And sure, I guess it’s a drawback theoretically. But in my time with the lens, the relatively slow maximum t-number didn’t impact my photos at all. Not once did my camera top out its ISO, or even come close. Not once did the shutter speed become so slow that my images suffered from camera shake (remember that we’ve got Optical Image Stabilization within the lens, and that with the newer Sony mirrorless cameras we’ve also got in-body stabilization helping to keep things steady). Yeah, T/5.6 is less bright than F/2.8, but I’m just not seeing that it matters. This lens isn’t typically going to be used in low-light situations, and even when I did so for testing purposes, my camera handled it.

The AF system is silent and responsive, with no external moving parts. Some articles that I’ve read on this lens have called the AF slow. I don’t see it. I’ve been able to instantly focus on whatever I need to focus on, without any fuss. Flying birds, flying bees, kids that won’t stop running, nearly transparent bubbles floating on the breeze; Sony’s DDSSM does the job well (in conjunction with my old workhorse A7II).

What’s been most surprising about this lens isn’t how effortless it is to make incredible looking pictures, though it is effortless. The big surprise is just how versatile it is. The 100mm focal length isn’t what I’d call a “go-to focal length” for me. But in my time with this lens I’ve shot portraits of my kids, macro photos that I’ve not been able to make with any other lens, shots of bees in flight, shots of helicopters and planes in flight, headshots, full body portraits, shots of my motorcycle, landscapes. It’s astounding how many uses I’ve found for the lens, and how excellent it’s been at such a variety of image styles. I could easily see this lens being packed into my everyday camera bag, alongside a 50mm and a wide angle. This trio would cover all of my needs, and I’d be hard-pressed to find a better short tele lens in any system.

Comparison with Other Lenses

In the world of lenses at large there are few competitors to the STF lens. Within the Sony mirrorless system, there’s even less competition. The apodization filter of the Sony FE 100mm F/2.8 STF GM OSS sees to that. Of course there’s the original STF lens, the 135mm that was originally made by Minolta for their A mount. This 135mm STF lens is still available for what’s now known as Sony’s A mount, but this lens has fewer lens elements and performs worse on MTF charts compared with the 100mm. It has fewer aperture blades, and is manual focus only. That lens is 18 years older than the modern 100mm STF. I don’t see any reason to shoot the older lens over the new one.

Outside of Sony’s systems, there’s the Fuji 56mm F/1.2 APD, which is an STF lens for Fuji’s X-series crop-sensor mirrorless cameras. This lens, by all accounts, makes beautiful bokeh. I haven’t yet used it. There’s the Chinese-made Venus Optics Laowa 105mm F/2 STF. This lens is available for Nikon F, Pentax K, Canon EF, Sony E, and Sony A mount, and costs one third to one half the price of the Sony STF (depending on mount). But it’s a manual focus only lens, with no electronic control, with worse build quality. Optical performance in all metrics is inferior.  For many users the Laowa lens will work just fine. If the cost benefit is most important, this may be a good choice.

Final Thoughts

For me, there’s no better short tele lens than the Sony FE 100mm F/2.8 STF GM OSS. And this surprised me. I expected to like the lens, write a review about a one-trick pony that makes blurry bokeh, and return it to my friends at B&H Photo. I didn’t expect to find a lens that’s helped me make some of my favorite photos that I’ve made all year. It’s been a breath of fresh air, and a fun marvel of optical engineering to get lost with.

At $1,495, it’s not a cheap lens. But make no mistake – this is a world-class optic for professionals and enthusiastic amateurs. It’s a lens that will allow us to make world-class photos if we have enough talent and vision and time to practice. Even if we’re not going to make exclusive use of the STF tech, it’s still one of the best lenses we can buy in the short telephoto segment.

Buy your own Sony FE 100mm F/2.8 STF lens from B&H Photo

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[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]

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