honor 135/3.5

[dexdog]

Anyone familiar with the Honor lenses? I recently bought a 1949 Leica IIIc on ebay because I was interested in the 50mm lens attached to it, described as a "topcof" lens. Sure enough, the 50mm lens is a chrome Topcor-S 50/2, in beautiful condition.

Anyway, the auction also included a lens described as a Komura 135/3.5. The lens in question arrived in a Komura black leather hard case, bearing an Isco front lens cap. The lens looks brand new, with flawless glass. Serial number is K. No. 90498. The lens bezel is labeled Honor 135mm, f=3.5. Pacific Rime camera has a write-up on the Honor cameras. The writer of the Pacific Rim article said that it would not be surprising to find that Honor sold a 135mm lens (because pretty much every camera maker did), although the writer had never seen one. Not a lot of info on the web other than Wikipedia/Camerapedia, and there is little discussion on the various Honor lenses in "Leica Copies" by HPR.

Does anyone have any info on the 135?

 

[johannielscom]

I wish I had!

That Honor lens might be something special, I have never heard of a Honor lens in 135mm.

Konica (when it was still Konishiroku) provided the Hexanon 50mm 1.9 lens for the Honor cameras and the camera-lens combo does cost a kidney a piece nowadays.

Can you post a picture of the lens? Very interesting to see if it looks anything like the Komura lenses ( I own a 135mm f3.5 Acall, wich was also made by Sankyo Kohki Komura) or the Force 135mm f3.5 that was reported in this forum this week, see other thread. Does it have a finder, caps etc.?

 

[johannielscom]

You can see my Acall 135mm f3.5 in this shot:

It came in original cases, one for lens and one for the finder, original hood andgeneric caps.
Does your lens look like this one?

Sorry for the purplish glow on lenses, I shot this before I sold my M8 and forgot to put the IR-filter on...

 

[ferider]

Hi Mark,

Apparently Honor lenses were offered by Zuihō Kōgaku Seiki, and some Komura lenses are labeled similarly. So not sure. You probably have seen this: http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Honor_lenses

Here is a Komura 135/3.5, so you can compare visually

http://www.collectiblecameras.com/home.php?cat=550

Best,

Roland.

 

[dexdog]

Can you post a picture of the lens? Very interesting to see if it looks anything like the Komura lenses ( I own a 135mm f3.5 Acall, wich was also made by Sankyo Kohki Komura) or the Force 135mm f3.5 that was reported in this forum this week, see other thread.

Pics of the lens. Unfortunately, no finder or caps. Johan, my lens looks very similar to the one in your picture. Roland, the lens that I have looks very much like the komura/sankyo lens in the link that you posted, except that mine is marked Honor.

Oh, by the way, please ignore the December date included on the pics. Should be today's date- new digicam, new battery, forgot to change the date to Nov

 

[David Murphy]

Apparently Honor, Acall, Komura, Telesar and maybe some other small Japanese lens companies or brands, had some common products. I don't know if anyone has correctly sorted out this history. Pacific Rim does have some interesting facts about it on their Web site. The lenses I've seen with these brand marks are all pretty nicely made and deliver good to excellent results. They tend to be compact as well, and are sometimes reasonably priced (sometimes not!).

 

[dexdog]

to the RFFer that contacted me about photos of this lens (author of camerapedia Honor article) please send me another email. I would be glad to send you photos of this lens, if you let me know how many and what format/size files that you prefer. I have been travelling a lot recently, and had email problems.