Ah, the 80’s. Top Gun, Robert Palmer, Magnum P.I. ,Members only you get the picture.
I’m not going to get into the who’s and whats of these lenses, honestly I don’t know it. What I do know is that they where extremely popular in the ‘80s and early 90’s as film SLR cameras became more popular and more affordable (Canon AE1 anyone?) and are still being made today under a slew of names. Heavy hitters of the industry like Quantaray, Bower, Vivitar, Deco Photo, Rokinon, Phoenix (sarcasm much?) and countless others that you’ll find out the brand when you open the package.
All the same look, design and specs. 500mm 1.8f. Manual focus, with a tripod mount, snazzy! But how are they really? Luckily my dad. A proud Canon AE-1 owner since the mid 80’s happened to have one of the originals of lens type sitting in his gun case, sort of ironic place to put it as we’ll find out.
The Kimunor 500mm f1.8 one of the originals of these extension tube loving class of lenses is surprisingly well built. With full metal externals, smooth action and decent weight.
I decided to give this hand-me-down, a try out on my Pentax K-70, a quick search on the web told me that this lens uses a T-mount (to replace the Canon FD mount my dad had on it). A day later problem one: While yes all these lenses say the use a T-mount they are often sold with an “x”-mount adapter. It is NOT in fact a proper T-mount, its some sort of un-named modified T-mount. Game over? An AHA! Moment later a Canon FD to Pentax K mount adapter was just a Prime delivery away.
The FD to PK adapter above. Seems to be of a good quality , reviews don’t mention problems, and it does work but I do wonder if its own glass is part of the weirdness showing up in shots of the Kimunor. Testing with a OEM FD mount lens will have to happen (Back to raid dads)
While I’m not a fan of the connection…The lens mount and outer ring twist tighten (on the Canon side) compared to the more normal bayonet mounts we are all used to…It is a light tight connection and after a few snap shots it became clear it worked the next morning off it was time for a test run!
On stationary objects the Kimunor comes out strong and appears sharp. But pixel peaking shows a tendency to meld colors. This becomes more apparent with out pixel peaking in the background, where blurring, color bleed, ghosting- best way to put it a 3D without the glasses effect is noticeable to the naked eye
Once again the image looks good overall with weird effects seeming to happen on the out of focus and background areas of the image, but by all means is look able and the weird effects mentioned while possibly distracting full screen or in large print would be in many cases unnoticeable on Instagram and other like sized images.
As seen a mentioned in the above captions the lens does seem to throw colors on non subject objects in weird ways. I am not 100% sure if this is caused by the lens itself (no finger prints!) or if it is the adapter. Either way its not the worst quality in the world, I might go so far to say that in this world of extreme 4k sharpness , in the right situations this fault or design flaw might add to a photo.
Upon opening the lens up (it unscrews in the middle) you are welcomed to the surprisingly only bit of plastic in the construction of the lens. The housing for the back element.
Glass weirdness aside the biggest flaw to the lens is how it focuses. The barrel twist style zoom is slow, awkward and nearly impossible to get fine focus on, and while there is an aperture control (that seems to do very little) there is no fine focus ring, just the main twist the whole barrel. The whole thing made trying to shoot anything remotely living a trial of zoom to about right then step forwards/backwards accordingly. To then find out later that what looked sharp in both viewfinder and screen was actually less than so. Stationary objects and a tripod make thing more precise as always and possibly using it on a model that can stay still while the focus work takes place will be a better test instead of wildlife…even though isn’t that what a telephoto is supposed to be good at?
Looks sharp? Don’t worry its not. Seems to be the theme of shooting with the Kimunor 500mm
And try to adjust focus on the fly with the funky twist barrel focus! At least the splash is crisp.
If you have ever shot a rifle before, you will notice a similarity before long. No your not crazy and really it makes since whichever company actually designed this lens (no matter what brand they are sold as) was thinking..It’s a spotting scope re purposed for the camera market!!
For those not familiar with hunting or shooting, rifle scopes don’t need to have camera quality glass or focusing systems, they need to zoom and give enough of a quality image for you to be able to tell what and where your aiming at. Company “A” makes cheaper hunting scope/binocular glass or even entire scopes, and comes up with the bright idea to double down and turn the same basic workings and set up into a camera lens. True? Sure makes since to me and here we are 30+ years later still able to buy the same 500mm f1.8 lenses from Amazon to Ebay!
So is it actually good at anything? Yeah actually……
It does pull of a pretty nice moonshot (tripod of course)
It also doesn’t do to bad of a portrait!
So if while I won’t suggest buying one at full price ($70-$100+ on Amazon) if you run across any of the 500mm f.8 lenses at a thrift store or garage sale for I’d say less than $30 it might be worth it to have.. Couple of notes..There are really countless names these things are sold under and at least black and white. If it looks like mine its the same lens! Looking at pictures of new ones for sale it looks like more plastic might be involved so it is possible quality has dropped. Because first impressions aside these early models are actually pretty well built, if very very basic. They were and are sold in a variety of mounts (even Current Sony!) The Kimunor came with 3 adapters a Canon FD, Pentax K and Olympus however good luck finding the adapters themselves to me it was easier to just buy an adapter..the fact my dad has a few FD lenses around didn’t hurt.