Industar-50 50mm F3.5 - businessman's lens

 

Industar 50mm f3.5 Review | A Fun One

I’ve recently acquired a new addiction to vintage lenses after have too much fun shooting with some Leica M mount lenses and some old M42 mount lenses.

One of the more interesting vintage lenses is the Russian made M42 mount Industar 50mm f3.5 pancake lens.

The Industar has won lots of praise over the decades and people really seem to love it. Here is why!

Industar 50mm 50-2 f3.5 Stats

Focal Length: 50mm equivalent to 75mm
Aperture Blade: 7 aperture blades
Elements: 4 elements
Coatings: Front element is not coated but rear element has an anti-reflective coating
Focus: Manual
CPU Contacts: No
Based on the Zeiss Jenna Tessar Design


So is the lens good?

No, not really, but it can be.

I know that doesn’t make sense because it’s hard to give any blanket statement like that to any lens, since lenses have many characteristics which maybe excel at one thing but fail miserably at another, this is especially true with a lot of vintage lens.

This review includes images from both my full frame Sony A7rII, Nikon Z6, Canon EOS R and the APS-C Fujifilm X-T2 and an overview of what its like using the lens on each camera.

Industar 50mm f3.5 Review | First Impressions



Most of these vintage lenses have been designed for 35mm film cameras, so I first shot a lot with the lens on my Sony A7rII to get the true perspective of how the lens was designed.

But my intentions when buying this lens were to actually use it on my Fujifilm X-T2 and X-Pro 2. It’s here on these APS-C cameras the lens gives very different results and it’s here where the Industar 50mm can really shine.

The lens I actually have the the 50-2, I’m not sure how it’s different from the 50, although I plan on getting that lens in the near future.

On the Sony A7rII my first impressions were “man this lens sucks.”  It has disgusting flaring, terrible vignetting, extremely soft corners and edges, but . . . it’s beautifully sharp in the center, has great contrast and a lot of character and it was this character that made me fall in love, just a little bit, with this lens. Then I tried it on my APS-C cropped Fujifilm cameras and oh my!

Samples with the full frame A7rII




Pros

  • Very sharp in the center
  • Fantastic contrast and micro contrast
  • Great color rendering
  • Lots of character
  • Super small
Cons

  • Terrible vignetting (full frame only)
  • Very soft corners and edges (full frame only)
  • Nasty ugly flaring
  • Difficult to adjust aperture
Looks ridiculous on most adaptersThose impressions are with a full frame camera like the Sony A7r II and you’re probably wondering, what happens if you put it on an APS-C camera like the Sony A6300 or the Fujifilm X-T2?

A few things happen, mostly positive. Here are a few APS-C samples taken on the XT2.

Because of the 1.5x crop the lens becomes a 75mm and because of this, the terrible vignetting and softer corners and edges for the most part disappear. So when shooting APS-C, you’re left only with the nasty ugly flaring – and I can live with that.

Now I haven’t tried it on a film camera. I know digital camera lenses are designed slightly different to compensate for the micro lenses on the digital sensors and many film lenses can often under perform when adapted to digital. Especially the Sony A7rII which has a more extreme sensor design with the micro lenses because of the short flange distance of the E-Mount.

 Shots with the X-T2






By:https://alikgriffin.com/