Some of the manual focus lens users were pleased to hear KMZ Zenit´s announcement to resume production of the famous Helios 40-2 85mm f/1.5 lens. But nearly now one detects their Zenitar 50mm f/1.2 prototype on their Photokina 2012 booth

On my visit of the Photokina 2012 fair in Cologne / Germany I visited the KMZ Zenit booth to take a look on the announced Helios 40-2. After that I searched a bit their display cabinet with a lot of lenses. And asked wheter I could take a closer look on some lenses.

The kind people from the KMZ booth even allowed me to take a very close look and test images for my homepage.

I thought this lens prototype will surely be covered by others, but still after some months I found no news about it - so I want to show my few short "test" - made with a Canon EOS 5D classic, and as a kind of reference with my converted Minolta Rokkor 58mm f/1.2 lens.

All corresponding images are made with same exposure value - and all images with same Lightroom settings.

All images in original picture size are linked.



And here images made with the Zenitar prototype lens:



The ceiling as a kind of vignetting test - left site the Zenitar, right side the Minolta Rokkor - with extra DIY tulip hood planned to add vignetting - see pictures above!
The Zenitar prototype has much vignetting - but I could love this.



Left side Zenitar 50mm f/1.2 prototype, right side my Minolta Rokkor 58mm f/1.2 lens.



The Minolta Rokkor 58mm f/1.2 lens is very well regarded in the manual focus community. In some regards it seems to surpass the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L and EF 50mm f/1.0L lenses - ~50mm lens comparisson on Fredmiranda.com.
And it seems the Zenitar prototype is not bad in this simple comparisson. I would be glad to see this lens starting into production.
Mechanical build quality seems to be high - probably not as precise as the Rokkor, but better than for example the error prone Samyang lenses.


Please visit my own photo equipment DIY page too :-)