Another Lens?!

Yes, I've bought another lens. I am turning into a lens junky. But this one was steal. It's a Minolta MD Tele Rokkor 135mm F3.5 and it was on eBay at an opening bid of £14.99 plus £4.98 P&P. There are a lot of 135mm Minolta lens floating about on eBay at the moment. Most are the older MC spec rather than MD and of the MDs there are they come in two flavours: F2.8 and F3.5¹.

This one was only an F3.5 but if it went for the opening bid it was a steal at under half the price of a typical example. Plus there was the added bonus that the seller had previously had it on the front of a micro four thirds camera and was leaving the adaptor on, so I could re-sell that on eBay and get a few quid back.

So despite already having the Sigma 19mm lens on order I thought it was worth a speculative bid. And I won it as no one else bid for it. He despatched it on Friday, 2nd class, from Liverpool and it arrived this morning.

The first thing we discovered was why he'd sold it with the adaptor on: it was jammed on the lens because he had over-tightened it by about 5-10° and neither of us could shift it. Bugger. I let it warm up for a while but still couldn't shift it so I took it outside, grabbed two bits of wood to make the bench vice in the workshop soft mouthed and gripped the adaptor firming in the vice. Then, while pressing in the locking button with one hand I gently turned the lens with the other and, hey presto, it was free.

The photo above was taken on my second wander about. The aperture is wide open at F3.5 but as the cross is a fair way away I've got reasonable depth of field and just look at the cobweb coming down from the cross on the right: it's pin sharp.

So £19.97 well spent methinks and I should be able to make a fiver back on the adaptor (and there's a good UV filter too) so the nett cost will be about £15 for a good little lens.

1. There's also an F2 apparently but I've never seen one on eBay and according to the review of the Rokkor Files they go for US$350-$400 in good condition. It also looks a bit fat for putting on the front of a NEX-6.