Auto Yashinon-DX 50 f2 - what a lens!

Dec 15, 2016 22:54:26 GMT tts said:

Cool. Nice to know, since most people will prefer 1,7 and 1,4 versions.

Yes - and I'm afraid I was one of the 'speed snobs' always favouring 1.2s and 1.4s.  In my defence, I was photographing indoor sports back in the 1970s and because one could not use flash, fast lenses and Ektachrome (or GAF500) pushed a stop and half was the only way to get results.  It's been just over 35 years since my first book was published in the UK and USA and it could not have been produced without those f1.4 Zeiss wide, standard and portrait lenses along with the occasional f2 28mm, 100mm and 135mm. 

Now that photography is a hobby again, you can get to try things out for pleasure more than purpose.  And I will be eternally grateful to this Forum and its many Members for opening my eyes to the joys of Yashica glass and the variety of their cameras; I only had genuine experience of the FR series which was a back up for the old Contax RTS' bodies.  If it was not for the informed comments of our Members and the rich content of this Forum, I would have missed a whole world of photographic pleasures; now I can shoot with cameras that take you from the Pentamatic right through to the SL400R.  Great fun - and still more to learn...

Hi tts,

You are quite right about Yashica ML lenses being of near identical quality to Zeiss glass where like-for-like exist; the only time this may prove false is under extreme lighting where the Zeiss T* coating is recognised as being slightly better than the ML.  However, as I have only recently discovered, if you go back to some of the old DS-M lenses, their coatings are as effective as the T* in providing flare resistance and high contrast. We live and learn...

Where Zeiss has the edge is largely in lenses for which Yashica can't (or has chosen not to) compete such as the super-fast 1.2 Planars, the 1.4 35mm and 85mm, and the f2 28mm, 100mm, 135mm and 200mm lenses.  The only lenses where Yashica and Zeiss have a like-for-like (or very close) sibling and Zeiss is far superior is the 21mm Distagon (sharpest wide-angle of all time) and the Distagon 15mm (a true wide-angle unlike the ML) and the 16mm F-Distagon which is the fish-eye equivalent of the ML 15mm.

Those lenses that Yashica produces that ace Zeiss glass are its ML 35mm, ML 55 2.8 Macro (superior to the 60 C-Planar thought not the S-Planar), 60mm Tomioka Yashinon (sharper even than the S-Planar) and 500mm f8 ML and Reflex.  In my opinion, the ML 35-70 f3.5 is even sharper than the famed Zeiss 35-70 f4 and the ML 70-210 f4 is as sharp and distortion-free as the greatest 70-210 ever made, the Zeiss VS 70-210 f3.5 Macro and superior to the VS 80-200 f4.

And Yashica produced one of the finest zooms ever produced - the ML 28-50.  In fact you can make a good case for the Yashica ML zooms as offering a better choice (and much better value than Zeiss) as the following are among the best, sharpest and least expensive out there:  28-50, 28-85, 35-70 f3.5, 35-70 f4, 35-105, 75-150, 75-210 f4 and 100-300.  And it seems we should add in certain production runs of the 28-210 as well.

I love my Zeiss lenses as they never let me down and the only ones I haven't owned are the 60 C-Planar, 100 f3.5, 210mm N-Mirotar and 1000mm f5.6 Mirotar. As many Members have commented, Yashica's ML lenses are excellent performers BUT some models have production inconsistencies; oddly, we should be grateful for them as it is the negative comments from one-off users that get reported most commonly and that helps to keep prices low...