A neat looking lens

http://cgi.ebay.com …&ssPageName=STR​K:MEWAX:IT
While checking for a possible telephoto m42 lens to buy I ran across this very different telephoto lens and was wondering has anyone ever own one like this before.

What did you want to know? Komura is a good brand in general. Those older, slow long lenses are iffy in IQ.

I have never seen one that could come apart and I've heard of many of the old lens which are use with m42 but I have not heard of this brand and could one that comes apart be any good .
Mostly just curious about it .

That's definitely an interesting lens, I've never seen one that comes apart like that before.

I wonder if it has dust issues.

kohr2000 wrote in post #8412772
I have never seen one that could come apart and I've heard of many of the old lens which are use with m42 but I have not heard of this brand and could one that comes apart be any good .
Mostly just curious about it .

its a cool design/idea

Nikon did it AGES ago with their telephotos

http://www.mir.com.my …elephoto/focusi​ngunit.htm

In fact, Canon did as well...

http://www.mir.com.my …dlenses/400600m​mfd.htm#FL

And Leica STILL does it

http://us.leica-camera.com …r_system/lenses​/3808.html

KenjiS Thanks I had never heard of those lens before thanks for posting them and I agree it is a cool ideal.

kohr2000 wrote in post #8414803
KenjiS Thanks I had never heard of those lens before thanks for posting them and I agree it is a cool ideal.

I believe it originated back when Telephoto lenses were a lot simpler optically, so really the huge difference between say, a 400 and a 600 was just the spacing of the elements...

You look at a modern 400mm and compare it to a 600mm lens and well...theres little similarity..but at this time? Not really, lens designs were still simple...The 400mm f/4.5 Nikkor is 4 elements in 4 groups for instance...it doesnt get much simpler than that! the modern Canon 400mm f/5.6 is 7 elements in 6 groups and the 400mm f/4 DO is 17 elements in 13 groups!

The 600 was 5 elements in 4 groups, the 800 had 5 in 5, and the 1200 had 5 in 5 also..Talk about simple...

Also they didnt try to keep the lenses relatively fast, for instance the Nikon system up there the 400mm starts at f/4.5..the 600 is f/5.6, 800 is f/8 and the 1200 is f/11...Try shooting with one of those Really..probubly not fun..

My theory as to why they died out is this:

The advent of lens coatings to reduce flare meant that you could now combine more elements to reduce aberrations and improve sharpness, What this meant was more specialized lens elements in a lens and less commonality between them...a 400 and a 600mm lens were now more than just a bit more air between the elements..the optical designs and formulations for both were designed specifically to be a 400mm or a 600mm lens..

it also meant more compact lenses for the focal length as well as MUCH better optical quality..Weight stayed the same though...and lenses got a lot faster as well...

A lot of these early lenses are honestly just a basic telescope...Not very good for snapping pictures and quite dim...

The only exception is that Leica there...i dunno how good those lenses are to be honest...i did a little search and one guy said at least as good as Canon/Nikon's and I'd believe it in that instance...

Oh and something else to keep in mind, in the 50s-early 70s when those lenses were made? Most film wasnt even ISO200...imagine shooting a f/8 lens on the most common color stock you had at the time, ISO64 Kodachrome....

I used to love Kodachrome25 and a lens with 1.8 could be tough to use with out good light and at that time I had no interest in long lens so I never learn about them .
So thanks for expanding my knowledge about older telephotos lens and about the new one as well.

Looks like a gun scope.

dakrikokoko wrote in post #8415800
Looks like a gun scope.

http://farm2.static.fl​ickr.com …062668_5563c30e​5e.jpg?v=0

Not as much as that

http://www.pentaxforum​s.com …rst-shots-impression.html

Doesnt look too terrible either considering you can get one for not so much money..

Kaigler wrote in post #8414568
I wonder if it has dust issues.

Probably, but then again if you can take it apart you can clean out the dust yourself.

looks like a rifle scope

Telephoto Lens?

Now days, virtually all the longer focal length lenses are telephotos. In fact, telephoto is now an acronym for long focal length. This was not always the case.

A telephoto lens is a long focal length lens whose physical length between the front element and the focal plane is shorter than its focal length. In other word that distance on a 1,000mm telephoto lens would be shorter in physical length than 1,000 mm.

I don't now of any extremely long focal length lenses that are produced these days that are not telephoto lenses but, they used to be very common.

Regarding the lens commented on by the OP, I would consider that lens close to unusable because it would be extremely difficult to manually focus an f/7 lens using a DSLR. It also seems to be grossly over-priced.