Rangefinder lenses, among which Minolta’s M Rokkor offerings were a small but highly regarded subset, are considered to be the non plus ultra of optics. In part this is because, owing to the short distance to the sensor (or film) plane, they can attain outstanding sharpness. But I suspect that the optical quality of rangefinder lenses also derives from the fact that many of them are the products of some of the most illustrious names in optical manufacturing: Leica, Zeiss, Minolta, Nikon. Rangefinder lenses also have other advantages. They are small and light, which makes them ideal for traveling and hiking. If you have ever hiked down into the Haleakala “crater” from the mountain’s summit, then you know that the uphill hike back to the car is the worse part of the experience. I have done this gorgeous hike, perhaps one of my favorite ones from a long lfe of hiking in nature, dozens of times. I always go loaded with camera, tripod and an assortment of lenses. Recently I did it for the first time with only a few rangefinder lenses instead of an assortment of SLR primes and zooms. An immediate benefit of the switch was that I was able to get away with lugging a much lighter tripod. The result: a more enjoyable hiking experience, that translated to more enjoyable photo sessions.
Rangefinder lenses are also mechanically simple compared to SLR lenses. For those like me who only use vintage glass, and who are not afraid to take apart an old lens in order to clean fungus, oil and other gunk, this is an advantage. One can buy a poorly maintained lens for quite a bit less money than the price of a shiny collector’s piece, and with a bit of patience and some basic tools leave it in pristine optical condition. Having said this, I have on not a few occasions struggled to reassemble SLR lenses, but I still have to meet a rangefinder lens that I cannot put back together in a matter of minutes.
Although I am not about to get rid of my vintage SLR glass, I have been trying to assemble a collection of rangefinder lenses, with the chief purpose of coming up with a small and light kit for hiking and, more importantly, for air travel. As a Sony mirrorless user, it is possible to choose among many superb lenses in focal lengths longer than, say, 35mm. But going wider than that becomes problematic. The reason for this is the same one that makes rangefinder lenses so sharp. The short distance to the sensor plane causes light paths towards the edge of the frame to strike the sensor at a shallow angle, resulting in smearing, loss of sharpness and color shift. The problem becomes more acute as focal length decreases. Conventional wisdom holds that this is not a problem with film cameras, for which the lenses were originally designed, and that smearing and color shift only show up when using vintage rangefinder lenses on digital sensors. The argument is that this is because digital sensors have a glass layer in front of them, whereas film does not.
There is almost certainly something to this argument, but I strongly suspect that the supposedly different results obtained with film and digital sensors is chiefly derived from the fact that film does not have the resolution to show imperfections that become very visible on a digital sensor. Like vinyl records, film is good at hiding imperfections, but incapable of reproducing the full content of a light or sound signal. I apologize to all fans of film and vinyl out there, but this is simply the case. The image is produced by the lens. Film is just a recording medium, and as recording media go, a digital sensor has capabilities that are beyond anything that film can deliver. There are those who, for aesthetic or other reasons, may choose to have that image degraded by film, Not me, I want to extract every last bit of detail and nuance from the image that a great lens can produce.
But I digress. There are a few choices of 28mm rangefinder lenses, and my first choice, the Voigtländer Ultron 28mm f/2 was a wrong one. Yes, it is sharp, but for reasons that I cannot quite fathom I never bonded with it. More to the point, it has an atrocious color shift on Sony cameras, and some amount of smearing of the edges (though it is not too bad in this last respect). Because I am a long-time Minolta fan, and I already owned a 40mm f/2 M Rokkor that I love, I decided to take my chances with the tiny yet problematic M Rokkor 28mm f/2.8. Some time ago, when I decided that I would like to try to get an M Rokkor 28mm, the reviews available for this lens suggested that it is a stellar lens, with virtually no smearing or color shift issues on digital sensors. But the lens is problematic because many examples suffer from an eruption of white spots on the front element that is impossible to fix. It is not a fungus problem that can usually be cleaned quite easily, but more likely a degradation of the optical cement binding some of the elements together. Some lenses on the market are described as being free of this problem, and the listing pictures appear to support this assertion, but they usually go for very high prices, the same or more than a 28mm Elmarit. Lenses that are honestly described as being affected by the white spot issue can be bought for less than USD 300, but that is still quite a bit of money for a lens that may be severely impaired relative to its true potential. So I decided to start looking for one, and I waited, and waited. After about 2 years a promising candidate showed up, described (and shown) as optically pristine, with original packaging, lens hood and caps, for less than half of the asking price of other pristine lenses. Since the seller was from Japan (always a good place to start) and had impeccable reviews, I took the plunge. The lens did not disappoint, it is truly in immaculate optical condition.
The first thing I did after receiving the Minolta M Rokkor was to compare it to the Ultron, which I had not yet sold. I will not bore you with side to side comparison shots of the same trees and railroad tracks, which I have nevertheless thrown away. Suffice it to say that where the Ultron smeared the corners and shifted the colors to a sickening bluish-purple, the M Rokkor held its ground like a champ. I sold the Ultron for almost the same amount of money that I had paid for it new, that was more than what I had paid for the Minolta. The rest is history, which I will attempt to summarize with a few images. All the photographs in this post were made with my M Rokkor 28mm mounted on either a Sony A7II or A7R, at apertures ranging from f/5.6 to f/11. They were shot in raw format and processed with Capture One. Minimal correction for vignetting was applied as needed to some of the images.
I made the feature image that headlines this post during a mid-November hike to Nambé Lake, a small alpine tarn in the Sangre the Cristo Mountains, close to my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Although it was a sunny and pleasant day, the weather had already been cold enough the previous weeks to build up a resilient lid of ice on the Nambé River, that drains the lake into the Rio Grande. The following three images show a small frozen waterfall along the river. Notice in these images of the waterfall the amount of detail on the ice, on the lichens and mosses, and also on the dry spruce needles laying on the rocks. On the third picture you should also check the foliage on the spruces to the left of the river. The green needles are sharp and perfectly resolved.
A full-size lightbox opens up when you click on any of the images
The purpose of the next two pictures, taken close to ground level, is to dispel any doubts about the corner performance of the 28mm M Rokkor. The first image shows the island of Molokai as seen from Honolua Bay, in Maui. The second one is a view of Haleakala across Maalea Bay. These two pictures are cropped from the original 3:2 format to 17:11. They preserve the full width of the original images but have lost a small sliver of sky. The bottom corners are what the lens generated. The corners may not be as sharp as the center of the image, but they are very close. Unless you are a dedicated pixel peeper, you probably wouldn’t notice any difference. And what small degradation there may be, especially on the second picture, may at least in part be a depth of field effect.
A full-size lightbox opens up when you click on any of the images
Having, hopefully, laid to rest any concerns about corner smearing and color shift, let us now look at a variety of images that may give you a feeling for the balance between the sharpness, contrast and color rendition of this lens. For how it performs when you are taking pictures, rather than testing a lens. In this case, inside the rainforest in Honolua Bay, of a krummholz spruce, the Nambé River and a bristlecone pine in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico, and of maples in the Manzano Mountains and aspens in the Jemez Caldera, also in New Mexico. The famous Minolta color is always kind to autumn.
A full-size lightbox opens up when you click on any of the images
I always prefer my photographs to do their own talking, so I will end this post with a few pictures taken at Cumbres Pass, near the Colorado-New Mexico border. The Denver & Rio Grande Railway was a narrow gauge railroad that carried ore, timber and passengers between Antonito, in Colorado, and Chama, in New Mexico. It ceased operation in the early 1950’s (see the train bulletin below, posted at the Cumbres Pass station). Thanks to initial support from the two neighboring states, it was revived as a tourist train in the 1980’s. Much of the rolling stock and several stations along the line have been restored and make it possible for one to travel back in time, at least for a few hours, to the golden age of steam. The photographs below are intended as a combination of “corner test shots” of the the little 28mm Minolta M Rokkor, and an attempt to capture the atmosphere of the Southern Rockies in early autumn.
A full-size lightbox opens up when you click on any of the images
Is this the 28mm for the CL?
Yes, that’s the one.
Great review as usual
Funfact: This lens can cover almost the entire sensor of the GFX with a very small amount of vignetting. I use it for my 50R and it gets the job done very well. Such a lens
Wow! That is indeed impressive. Even knowing how good this lens is on full frame, I never thought that it would work on larger sensors. I’m sure that the look of such a tiny lens on a medium format camera is quite unique. Thanks for your visit!