eBay Vintage Lens Buy: Rare Taisei Kogaku (Tamron) 135mm f2.8
A remarkable lens from Japan, very sharp wide open, of the famous zeiss inspired design with preset aperture. It's well made, all glass and steel, with excellent color and contrast. The optics in this lens are amazing, it is simple and it works. It's bokeh and colour rendering are brilliant and it's as sharp as a razor. This is one of the mythical lenses of the days of lore, and hard to find even on ebay. There is about 340 degrees of rotation on the focus ring. The lens came with a 2X adapter as well. This series of lenses (model 680) were made between 1962 & 1969. The included tele converter is shown in the picture. This gave the kit the twin tele name.
The Mount Problem
Also known as the Taisei Kogaku [Tamron] Tamron 680 Twin-Tele 135mm f/2.8. A rare lens with the hard to adapt praktina mount. Mounting this lens onto to a EOS Rebel won't be easy. I have been trying to source an adapter for my Canon 600D Rebel but so far all information has pointed me to praticka B mount adapters. The praktina mount is often confused with the praktica B mount (PB). A few sellers on eBay (fleaBay) sell PB->EOS adapters but no praktina mounts.
They are not remotely the same thing, either, which is worth spelling out for anyone about to make my mistake. Praktina came out of Kamera-Werkstätten in Dresden and ran from 1952 to 1960. Praktica B arrived in 1979, from Pentacon, with electrical contacts in the bayonet. Different decade, different company, different mechanism. And I had the mechanism wrong too: I called it a bayonet type screw mount, which is a contradiction in terms. It is a three-lug breech-lock. You line the lens up with the dots and turn a collar on the camera body, and the lens itself never rotates. Nothing screws in at all.
In addition, I am missing the 2x adapter that came with it that gave it the twin tele name.
No praktina mounts available anywhere in the world. The only inkling on the Internet is some guy who may be able to source work in manufacturing some praktina-EOS adapters for a steep Euro. I think it would be worth it since it is a rare lens and a hard to find adapter conversion. If only it came in the ubiquitous universal M42 mount. I would be outside on this glorious midday afternoon snapping away at all the pretty flowered trees.
Here is the part I could not work out at the time, and it turns out the answer is not the one I assumed. The Praktina flange distance is 50mm. Canon EF is 44.0mm and M42 is 45.46mm, both shorter, so a plain hollow adapter with no glass in it would keep infinity focus on either. Optically there is no problem whatsoever. The problem is mechanical: you have to fit a working three-lug breech-lock receiver and a male EF bayonet into six millimetres of depth, or into four and a half for M42, and the Praktina hardware is bulky. That is why nobody sells one. It is not that the physics forbids it. It is that there is nowhere to put the metal.
Which also explains why every adapter I could find was for mirrorless. Micro Four Thirds sits at about 19mm and Sony E at about 18mm, so there is thirty-odd millimetres of room to work with and the machining stops being a puzzle.
Currently my copy has some haze on the front element and some oil on the blades. So far the oil has not affected the buttery smooth blades when toggling the aperture ring. The lens feels very hefty, solid and genuine feel of a well made lens. I am impressed. Hopefully sourcing some type of praktina to M42 mount would reap great benefits.
The only sources of hand made adapters are for m4/3, Sony NEX, and Samsung NX cameras.
That was true when I wrote it. It is not true anymore. A specialist outfit trading as RareAdapters now turns out Praktina FX adapters for Micro Four Thirds, Sony E, Fuji X, Nikon Z, Canon RF, Canon EF-M and Leica screw mount, all with a nylon set screw so you can dial in infinity. Around seventy dollars. None of the big names, Fotodiox or K&F or Rayqual, will touch the mount. And there is still, after all these years, nothing at all for a Canon EF DSLR, which is exactly the camera I was holding when I wrote this post. So the complaint stands. I just needed a different body.
Technical Info
F/range-2.8 - 22
Focal range 135mm, or 225mm f/5.5 with the matched converter
12 aperture blades (bokeh goodness)
On that middle line, the seller and I both called the converter a 2x, and it is not. Two hundred twenty-five divided by one thirty-five is about 1.67. Tamron never engraved a multiplier on the thing at all, only the result, which is why everybody guesses. The proper name for the pair is a 135mm f/2.8 that becomes a 225mm f/5.5.
The twelve blades check out, and there is a reason for them that I did not know then. A preset diaphragm never has to slam shut in the instant before the shutter fires the way an automatic one does. It just sits where you leave it. So the designers were free to pile in blades until the opening came out round, and they did.
Who Actually Made It
The bracket in the name deserves a footnote. Taisei Kogaku is the company; Tamron is the brand it sold under, and in 1962 those were not yet the same word. The firm started in November 1950 in Urawa, Saitama, with thirteen people, as Taisei Kogaku Kiki Seisakusho. It registered Tamron as a trademark in 1957, naming it after Uhyoue Tamura, an optical designer, and it did not legally become Tamron Co., Ltd. until 1970. My favorite detail out of all of this: the T in T-mount stands for Taisei, not Tamron, because the company had not changed its name yet when it invented the thing.
The 680 is the T-mount version, introduced in 1962. The seller's "1962 & 1969" is close but the production end is not documented anywhere I can find; the best anyone offers is somewhere around 1968. The "famous zeiss inspired design" line I would not lean on either. No source I have found prints an element count or an optical type for the 680, and nearly every 135mm of that decade is some descendant of a Sonnar or an Ernostar, so the phrase manages to be both unverifiable and true of almost everything.
The Real Puzzle
Here is what I should have noticed in 2013 and did not. Praktina production ended in May 1960. This lens came out in 1962. Taisei Kogaku built it for a camera system that was already two years dead.
Which leaves two possibilities, and I genuinely do not know which one I own. Either this is a very late special-order fixed mount for a system nobody was buying anymore, or it is an ordinary T-mount 680 wearing a Praktina T-mount adapter ring, and the rare object in my hands is the ring rather than the lens. Tamron's whole business model was selling one lens with a drawer full of mount rings, so the second is the likelier answer. And the maddening part is that it is a five-second test. If the mount unscrews, I have a common lens and an uncommon ring. I have never checked.
Have you used this one on a modern digital camera? Sample photos, adapter tips and experiences with Taisei optics are all welcome. But I have one question above the rest: has anybody else ever seen a Praktina-mount Twin-Tele? I cannot find a second documented example anywhere, and since Praktina died two years before this lens was born, I suspect what I actually have is a standard T-mount 680 wearing a rare Praktina adapter ring. If you own a Praktina mount ring, or a 680 in any unusual mount, tell me what the back of yours looks like and whether it unscrews.
Source(s):
- Tamron Co., Ltd. (n.d.). Tamron history. https://www.tamron.com/global/company/tamron_history_courses.html
- Camera-wiki. (n.d.). Tamron. https://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Tamron
- Lens-DB. (n.d.). Tamron Twin-Tele / Converto 135mm f/2.8 (1962). https://lens-db.com/tamron-twin-tele-converto-135mm-f28-1962/
- Kamerastore. (n.d.). Tamron 135mm f/2.8 Twin-Tele (T2) [Specifications: 12 aperture blades; 225mm f/5.5 with converter; 58mm filter; 431g]. https://kamerastore.com/en-us/products/tamron-135mm-f2-8-twin-tele-t2
- MFlenses Forum. (n.d.). Tamron 135mm f/4.5 Twin Tele (225mm). https://forum.mflenses.com/tamron-135mm-f4-5-twin-tele-225mm-t34289.html
- MFlenses Forum. (n.d.). Tamron model 680 AR fixed mount 135 2.8. https://forum.mflenses.com/tamron-model-680-ar-fixed-mount-135-2-8-t8855.html
- MFlenses Forum. (n.d.). Praktina to EOS conversion, help please. http://forum.mflenses.com/praktina-to-eos-conversion-help-please-t52362.html
- MFlenses Forum. (n.d.). Praktina lenses and flange distance. https://forum.mflenses.com/praktina-lenses-and-flange-distance-t84986.html
- JAPB. (n.d.). Lens mounts: Praktina [Breech-lock, 50mm flange focal distance]. https://japb.net/theory/lensmounts/praktina/
- Eckman, M. (2017, November). Praktina FX (1953). https://mikeeckman.com/2017/11/praktina-fx-1953/
- Westin, S. H. (n.d.). Lens mounts by register distance. Cornell University Program of Computer Graphics. https://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/misc/mounts-by-register.html
- Camera-wiki. (n.d.). Prakticar [Praktica B bayonet, 1979, Pentacon]. https://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Prakticar
- Amateur Photographer. (n.d.). Praktina: a forgotten landmark, and a company that beat Nikon by six years. https://amateurphotographer.com/technique/film-photography/classic-cameras/praktina-a-forgotten-landmark-and-a-company-that-beat-nikon-by-six-years/
- Real Photographers Forum. (n.d.). Tamron Twin-Tele (Taisei Kogaku) 135mm f/2.8. https://realphotographersforum.com/threads/tamron-twin-tele-taisei-kogaku-tamron-twin-tele-135mm-f-2-8.24415/
I know this is an old post, but I have acquired one of these lenses in what seems to be Pristine condition. Was wanting to sell, but not sure what its real worth is. Any help?
ReplyDeleteI know this is an old post, but I have acquired one of these lenses in what seems to be Pristine condition. Was wanting to sell, but not sure what its real worth is. Any help?
ReplyDeleteI apologize for the late reply. I cannot remember how much I bought it for but to my understanding it is rare because of the mounting system. I would price it about USD 80 -120.
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