Dez
Bodger Extraordinaire
I have heard a lot of opinions about the famous J3 lens, but there seems to be a range of opinion just as wide as the variation in quality of this sometimes-great lens. In particular, I have heard various posters praise the virtues of the older silver or newer black version over the other.
Putting aside the obvious fact that the older a lens is, the more likely it is that it has been damaged somehow, and considering that since cleaning and re-lubing the lens is fairly easy, what are the tradeoffs?
Speaking from my limited experience with these lenses in LTM, one black, two silver, (the Kiev mount ones seem better made, and was only in silver), I found that the black one was spot on for focus, but one of the silver ones was way off, the other OK, not perfect but not worth the effort to adjust. I find the older lenses seem to have much less internal reflection than the black one, which seems to me to have minimal coating, although I have seen at least one post that says exactly the opposite.
So what are people's opinions? Me, I think I would vote for the old silver one based on my statistically invalid sample.
Cheers,
Dez
Putting aside the obvious fact that the older a lens is, the more likely it is that it has been damaged somehow, and considering that since cleaning and re-lubing the lens is fairly easy, what are the tradeoffs?
Speaking from my limited experience with these lenses in LTM, one black, two silver, (the Kiev mount ones seem better made, and was only in silver), I found that the black one was spot on for focus, but one of the silver ones was way off, the other OK, not perfect but not worth the effort to adjust. I find the older lenses seem to have much less internal reflection than the black one, which seems to me to have minimal coating, although I have seen at least one post that says exactly the opposite.
So what are people's opinions? Me, I think I would vote for the old silver one based on my statistically invalid sample.
Cheers,
Dez
Sylvester
Well-known
I've always heard "the older the better" considering FSU stuff... But hey, it might just be sample by sample choice... I'd get the one with the mintiest glass...