Pen F Tele lenses

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良かったね！
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I read a lot about the lengths going up to say 70 or 100mm, but not so much about the longer teles. I assume this is due to scarcity or lack of interest. I just came to own a 250/5, but have a lot of shots left on the roll and I may be hunting for opportunities to make decent use of this lens. Any thoughts on it or the 150, 100-200, 400, and beyond?

Cheers,
Phil
 
All of the Zuiko lenses seemed to have a good reputation but I doubt if they ever sold many big long telephotos for it. The appeal of the camera was its small size. It was also an era when there were lots of inexpensive pre-set diaphragm T-mount lenses on the market, plus adapters for other camera lens brands.

Another consideration is that the Pen F (and Fv and Ft variants) wasn't on the market for very long before Olympus managed to make the small full frame OM. It was always a problem getting the half frame images processed and printed, and most amateurs thought that the cameras made too many exposures on a roll. The lenses are scarce!
 
The really long lenses are pretty rare, congrats on your 250.

My longest Pen lens is the 150, and I like it:

20576140_krFdt-L.jpg


Roland.
 
Thank you for the perspective. I appreciate that the long lenses are bulkier, but compared to s DSLR, there is some appeal to the old ways. Much as I love my rangefinders, I think that for sunny-day shooting, short and long, the pen f/ft/fv is a mighty flexible setup.
 
The single frame 35mm film image is really about the same size as the DSLR sensor, and films have gotten finer grained and sharper since the 1960's. A lot of us hoped that Olympus would have come out with a single frame rangefinder camera with interchangeable lenses but the bugaboo of processing and printing was always there.

A single frame CL would be a nice camera!
 
I have used the 150 and 250 and they are both very nice lenses, the 250 is uncommon, very well built and a rotating mount for easy horizontals and verticals. It is a preset lens. The 400 and up are very rare and expensive.
 
I would not buy into a system without teles.

The pen F lenses were well respected in their day. If in good repair, they should still ne as good.

250 is a mighty long lens for half frame camera, the same as 500 mm for a full 35mm frame.
 
Al Kaplan said:
...
Another consideration is that the Pen F (and Fv and Ft variants) wasn't on the market for very long before Olympus managed to make the small full frame OM. ...
Click to expand...

Actually, there was a short lived m42 full frame SLR that Oly offered during the period between the Pen F series and the OM series (1972-). The Oly FTL was introduced in 1971 and ran somewhat over a year until the M-1 was available.. Maitani contended that this was not made by Oly, but instead supplied by a subcontractor.
 
Lens focal length comparisons between half frame and full frame are not one to two. The actual relationship could be one of two things, depending on whether you figure the diagonal of the negative or the short side. Half frame's short side is 18mm while full frame is 24mm so the ratio is three to four. A 35mm lens on half frame is very close in coverage to a 50mm on full frame.
 
So, the 250 is about the same as a 400 in 35mm?
It is a unique looking lens. To look at the glass, it seems like a donut - it's my only lens with this sort of visible beveling.
Anyone use the 100-200? I have seen it around, but assume that its weight is analogous to the 50-90 - iow/ heavy.
 
I think that the 250 is a catadioptric design, a so-called "mirror lens". The main mirror in the rear is donut shaped while the secondary mirror in the front is a round circle coated on the rear of the front element. They were quite the fad in the 1970's, with everybody from Nikon to Spiratone either making or marketing one. The most popular size was 500mm f/8. Most of them had an effective apperture of f/9.5 because of that "hole in the donut".

Leitz marketed their "stove pipe" 2 element 800mm Telyt in Minolta mount while Minolta's 800mm mirror lens was also made in Leicaflex/Leica R mount. This was about the same time as the Leica CL/ Minolta CL cooperation.

The first catadioptric marketed in the U.S., I think by Spiratone, was the Russian Maksutov 500mm. Photographers clamoring for 500mm Maksutovs might have been the real reason for the end of the "cold war".
 
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