Playing With Lenses: They should have sticked to selling kitchen appliances: Auto Sears Multicoated 1:2.8 28mm

Wednesday, 27 September 2017

They should have sticked to selling kitchen appliances: Auto Sears Multicoated 1:2.8 28mm

Cost: 14$

I expected more from this lens after reading some of the online reviews. Nothing spectacular, but how hard is it to screw up a wide-angle prime lens? Well, they succeeded beyond expectations... This was one bad puppy.

The lens itself does have the looks, and the heavy feel of quality. Nice lettering with even a handy marking for the macro achievements. The aperture and focus rings worked smooth but sharpness was severely lacking, and so was the resolving resolution. This on top of severe chromatic aberration. Trust me, image quality was pretty bad...

It is therefore a mystery why this lens was rebranded by so many companies. I found this lens under "Albinar", "Vivitar", "Sirius", and even actual lens manufacturers such as "CPC", "Sigma", "Minolta"and even "Canon". Are these all the same lens, or clones with some differences in quality and build?

In any case, it's not a keeper. To bad, I could have use for another 28mm.

Multi Coated stands for a multiple of chemical coatings for lens surfaces with minimum light loss. The result is a dramatic improvement in both color fidelity and brightness and the elimination of flare and ghost images.

Auto, in the world of manual lenses, stands for the ability to communicate the aperture, via a mechanical way, from the lens to the camera.

Lens Specification:

Focal Length: 28mm

Maximum Aperture: F2.8

Minimum Aperture: F22

Image Format: 35mm

Lens Mount: PK

Optics: 7 elements, 7 groups

Blades: 6

Focussing: Manual

Minimum Focus: 25cm

Maximum Magnification: 1:4