Yashica lenses? Please share your thoughts
- Thread starter Cieloent
- Start date
Zissou
Well-known member
great lenses, ive uses them on a canon 350D with an adapter. Yashica never took off like Nikon/Canon/Minolta/Contax/Pentax did, and now its basically down to Nikon/Canon/Sony/Panasonic, so its easy and cheap to snatch up great Minolta Rokkor or Yashica Yashinon glass cheaply.
So basically it's a go. I need something past 55mm and I'm looking into a 135mm prime or even a zoom. They have a lot of fat lenses at the 50mm , but really ntohing lower than that. I found a 28mm 2.8 which is not bad but I would love for a 20/24mm in the 2.0 range.
If you or anyone else has any tips on some good glass ( for less money ) please share
thank you
Zissou
Well-known member
canon FD stuff is pretty decent, if you can get an adapter. a lot of Rokkor (Minolta, then KonicaMinolta, now Sony) lenses are great, cheap, and readily available, but Yashica, Pentax, Contax, and other misc 'lost camera company' lenses are great buys if you can find the right adapters for your camera. Frankly i dont know what fits what anymore, but just because its 'old' or 99% of kids shooting with D60's or Rebels have never heard of the company that made it doesnt mean it isnt good glass. Most of the prosumer lenses today are garbage (Nikons' 18-200VR and VRII come to mind, not to mention the Canon 18-200IS; barrel distortion, vignetting, CA, etc and WAAAY too soft for anything but random vacation pictures at BEST)
Nikon stuff, for the quality difference, is too expensive, same with Leica gear (as far as a prosumer or an interested consumer/enthusiast is concerned). I have a Minolta Rokkor 50mm f1.7 that, in my experience, is capable of better shots than the Nikkor 50mm f1.4D i shoot on so damn often, and has never given me the same ghosting and chromatic abberation wide open as the Nikkor and Canon glass i have (f1.4's and f1.8's, all 50mm).
The great thing about Canons, aside from their vastly superior video, is their ability to use glass from Nikon and other manufacturers, Yashica included. As a matter of fact, we shot most of our first tele ad on a Canon body, with Nikkor glass (kind of a weird tribute to the first Kwanon camera, which was a Leica knockoff company that later became Canon lol)
Personally, in the next year i will be switching to Canon bodies, but retain all my Nikkor glass, and hopefully get enough adapters to keep all my misc 'other' manufacturer glass operable with the Canon bodies as well. I would stick with primes, zooms usually have some oddities and can exhibit particular peculiarities (plz ignore the alliteration) with each particular sample; a prime is a prime unless its been damaged or is known to be garbage. Yashica, Contax, Pentax, Minolta, all made some great glass, and NONE of them really made any great DSLR's, so its likely you would be able to snag them up cheaply, grab some adapters, and get the same quality as Nikkor or Canon glass for 20% less if not more.
Besides, chances are your target audience and/or clients are not NEARLY as discerning as you. I used a Canon FD mount 28mm for an ad recently, with a Letus Extreme and an XH-A1, there was, to me, CRAZY vignetting (i did a little post prod work on it), but it was sharp as could be; and the client loved it; i HATED it. when i showed the client the original files, after the ad went out, he told me he liked the original much better; we all had a laugh about that.
Im fairly young at 26, but i have a lot of associates that work with me or independently, all fairly young, and they all exhibit the same characteristic; they all stick with 'brand' lenses (ie only buy Canon lenses for Canon bodies, Nikkors for Nikons, Sony for Sony's etc) to almost a fault; i have an employee who questioned Minolta lens quality versus Sony's for his DSLR; i ended up buying a quartet of Minolta lenses and gave them to a friend for his photography business, while my employee still cant afford the new 'Sony' lenses. If your after the image quality but price conscious, mix and match. Last year i was at Cannes and saw almost every 'photographer' running around with a Nikon D300 and the requisite 18-200VR with either an SB-900 or SB-800 attached; random 'photographers' that took absolutely HORRID shots. i too was packing a D300, with just a 50mm f1.4D. I sold pics, and paid for the trip with them. I was there to see a friends film, and studying language on the French Riviera; the shots i took were mostly for me. Most the work i was shown by others was deplorable and embarassing, and a lot of it was the slow, 'consumer' glass that was used. I shot every last shot with either my D300 (digital) and 50mm f1.4 as well as a Minolta Maxxum 7000 (film) and Rokkor f1.7. Aside from technique, the glass mattered most; my friend shot on my backup D50 with an f1.8; we both had far superior shots, IQ wise, than most.
If i could do it again i would have taken the same Nikkor and a 5DMkII instead, or the 5DMkII and the Rokkor. Obviously economy is important to you; check out any reviews you can online, and dont be afraid to try something new. Half the guys i met dragging D300's or D200's around at Cannes asked me if my Minolta was a new DSLR; i think the Maxxum 7000 is from the early 80's (it is my fathers), really shows how much is generally known about the craft; and better for folks open to best showcase ones creativity. All i wanted to do was prove i was as good with film as i was with digital.
Nikon stuff, for the quality difference, is too expensive, same with Leica gear (as far as a prosumer or an interested consumer/enthusiast is concerned). I have a Minolta Rokkor 50mm f1.7 that, in my experience, is capable of better shots than the Nikkor 50mm f1.4D i shoot on so damn often, and has never given me the same ghosting and chromatic abberation wide open as the Nikkor and Canon glass i have (f1.4's and f1.8's, all 50mm).
The great thing about Canons, aside from their vastly superior video, is their ability to use glass from Nikon and other manufacturers, Yashica included. As a matter of fact, we shot most of our first tele ad on a Canon body, with Nikkor glass (kind of a weird tribute to the first Kwanon camera, which was a Leica knockoff company that later became Canon lol)
Personally, in the next year i will be switching to Canon bodies, but retain all my Nikkor glass, and hopefully get enough adapters to keep all my misc 'other' manufacturer glass operable with the Canon bodies as well. I would stick with primes, zooms usually have some oddities and can exhibit particular peculiarities (plz ignore the alliteration) with each particular sample; a prime is a prime unless its been damaged or is known to be garbage. Yashica, Contax, Pentax, Minolta, all made some great glass, and NONE of them really made any great DSLR's, so its likely you would be able to snag them up cheaply, grab some adapters, and get the same quality as Nikkor or Canon glass for 20% less if not more.
Besides, chances are your target audience and/or clients are not NEARLY as discerning as you. I used a Canon FD mount 28mm for an ad recently, with a Letus Extreme and an XH-A1, there was, to me, CRAZY vignetting (i did a little post prod work on it), but it was sharp as could be; and the client loved it; i HATED it. when i showed the client the original files, after the ad went out, he told me he liked the original much better; we all had a laugh about that.
Im fairly young at 26, but i have a lot of associates that work with me or independently, all fairly young, and they all exhibit the same characteristic; they all stick with 'brand' lenses (ie only buy Canon lenses for Canon bodies, Nikkors for Nikons, Sony for Sony's etc) to almost a fault; i have an employee who questioned Minolta lens quality versus Sony's for his DSLR; i ended up buying a quartet of Minolta lenses and gave them to a friend for his photography business, while my employee still cant afford the new 'Sony' lenses. If your after the image quality but price conscious, mix and match. Last year i was at Cannes and saw almost every 'photographer' running around with a Nikon D300 and the requisite 18-200VR with either an SB-900 or SB-800 attached; random 'photographers' that took absolutely HORRID shots. i too was packing a D300, with just a 50mm f1.4D. I sold pics, and paid for the trip with them. I was there to see a friends film, and studying language on the French Riviera; the shots i took were mostly for me. Most the work i was shown by others was deplorable and embarassing, and a lot of it was the slow, 'consumer' glass that was used. I shot every last shot with either my D300 (digital) and 50mm f1.4 as well as a Minolta Maxxum 7000 (film) and Rokkor f1.7. Aside from technique, the glass mattered most; my friend shot on my backup D50 with an f1.8; we both had far superior shots, IQ wise, than most.
If i could do it again i would have taken the same Nikkor and a 5DMkII instead, or the 5DMkII and the Rokkor. Obviously economy is important to you; check out any reviews you can online, and dont be afraid to try something new. Half the guys i met dragging D300's or D200's around at Cannes asked me if my Minolta was a new DSLR; i think the Maxxum 7000 is from the early 80's (it is my fathers), really shows how much is generally known about the craft; and better for folks open to best showcase ones creativity. All i wanted to do was prove i was as good with film as i was with digital.
Last edited:
PastePotPete
Member
I went this route for my T2i. I have three Yashica primes: a 28mm 2.8, 50mm 1.9, and a 135mm 2.8. I like the results so far(haven't had a chance to shoot with the 135mm yet). For all three I got $22 fotodiox adapters from Amazon. All told, before the adapters, I spent $95 for all three lenses.
thisisapocalypse
Well-known member
Yashicas aren't bad at all, there's not a lot of available in terms of anything *exotic* however, since the faster speeds/exotic focal lengths were sort of left to the Zeiss lenses in C/Y mount. Heck you can find Zeiss Contax stuff pretty cheap on eBay if you wait for it. Also don't forget that a number of Rollei SL35 (QBM) mount lenses will work on Canon bodies - you can get some great Zeiss glass this way for nearly nothing if you are patient.
Chris Watson
Well-known member
I've seen some samples from Yashica lenses and some swear it's some of the sharpest lenses out there. While we're on the subject of obscure lenses, you should look into Russian Primes. Especially the Helios 44 series. It's 58mm f/2 so it's not the fastest or widest 50 something but.......
http://vimeo.com/10942299
The best thing about it? It can usually be had for around $30 or $40. There's also the Mir 24 which is 35mm f/2 and the Jupiter-9 which is 85 f/2 both of which retail for under $150 if you're patient.
http://vimeo.com/10942299
The best thing about it? It can usually be had for around $30 or $40. There's also the Mir 24 which is 35mm f/2 and the Jupiter-9 which is 85 f/2 both of which retail for under $150 if you're patient.