TenEleven
Well-known
I'll chime in and say that the vignette in dexdogs examples looks to be a bit extreme. It vignettes, but by f8 it should clean up - at least my copies do on film.
It's one of those lenses that does much better in black and white than color. Why that is I can't really tell you, but it produces nice tonal gradations on black and white film. For color it's a bit too punchy for my tastes. Overall it's still a great lens - it just lived in the shadow of the faster post-war Biogon and cost almost as much as aforementioned lens so it did not sell that well. Typical Zeiss...
Someone mentioned it already, but the post-war East-German Biometar is also a worthy lens to consider. It's kind of rare so it does not come up often, but sometimes you can get lucky and snag it for a reasonable amount. This lens of flies under the radar for a lot of people.
The build quality certainly is not up to post-war or pre-war standards, but the lens itself is very good. And you get to keep the f2.8 aperture. Xenotar type, so you get very good central sharpness from wide open. No glow, some mild coma. The corners clean up by f4 onwards on my copy.
It's one of those lenses that does much better in black and white than color. Why that is I can't really tell you, but it produces nice tonal gradations on black and white film. For color it's a bit too punchy for my tastes. Overall it's still a great lens - it just lived in the shadow of the faster post-war Biogon and cost almost as much as aforementioned lens so it did not sell that well. Typical Zeiss...
Someone mentioned it already, but the post-war East-German Biometar is also a worthy lens to consider. It's kind of rare so it does not come up often, but sometimes you can get lucky and snag it for a reasonable amount. This lens of flies under the radar for a lot of people.
The build quality certainly is not up to post-war or pre-war standards, but the lens itself is very good. And you get to keep the f2.8 aperture. Xenotar type, so you get very good central sharpness from wide open. No glow, some mild coma. The corners clean up by f4 onwards on my copy.
