At 09:18 11.1.2001 +0200, you wrote:
>Hello all.
>Anyone have any experience and comments on the Meyer Oreston lens? I have
>not as yet seen results from the camera. I do have two Pentacon 50mm f1.8
>lenses which appear to be quite good (for my purposes anyhow).
>Conrad F. Samuels
>Kirstenhof RSA
Hi Conrad!
I have some M42 Pentacon and Carl Zeiss Jena gear, and some of the lenses
are truly excellent (even at large magnifications of the original
slide/neg). The Meyer Oreston 1.8/50mm is basically same construction as
Pentacon 1.8/50 - it's a COMPLETELY same lens. But it may be differnt
mechanically as there were a lot of variations over the years at Pentacon.
Meyer Goerlitz was an old pre-war (under slightly different name) lens
making company which was lately integrated into the Pentacon VEB, and the
name Meyer was then sometimes replaced with Pentacon (like the 4/300
Pentacon and 4/300 Meyer Orestegor - completely same lens). So the only
different parts could be the coatings (is it MC, or Single coated? You
should either find "Multi Coated" or red "MC" or white "MC" on the lens -
than it's multicoated. Otherwise it is only single-coated. The quality of
Pentacon/Meyer multicoating was also different over the years, with the
later being the much better. Another difference between the Pentacon and
Meyer 1.8/50 could be in the lens barrel aesthetics - over the years
Pentacon changed the looks of the lenses. For example, checker-board
pattern (silver-black) on focusing ring is quite older than black diamond
pattern.
As to the optical performance, the lens is a 6 element in 4 groups design,
try to compare it to 6/4 Pentax Takumars (if any). I can give you a
comparsion with another M42 lens for Praktica, the Carl Zeiss Jena Pancolar
1.8/50, which is 6 el. in 5 groups design, and definitely _at least_ on par
with similar Pentax A lenses (A 1.7/50 comes to mind). The Meyer/Pentacon
is only a little bit worse wide open and at the corners than the Pancolar,
but should be tack sharp at f/5.6 or f/8. But check for haze, of course.
And if singlecoated, it would give you a wonderful slightly soft effect at
1.8 aperture, but very sharp images stopped down (thus you can get two
flavours of images from one lens). I hope you enjoy it ;)
Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything about the Spotmatic F metering
you asked as well - I don't own one. Just the lens. If you want, you could
find some more info on Pentacon stuff on www.egroups.com, search for PUGW
group - it's Praktica Users Group Worldwide and we had lots of discussions
on these lenses in the archives, I hope.
Frantisek
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