There was a post by Bruce Stockert ealier enquiring about Kiron lenses as he had been fortunate to land on an 80-200 f4 etc for some giveaway price. Well IMHO Bruce has landed on a bargain. And this led me to consider. With good independent lens availability what was the point of OEM lenses? Why buy a Minolta MD 70-210mm F4 for about £200 when a top independent like the Kiron 70-210mm F4 Zoomlock/Focus stop would have cost about £130? Well I was around back in the day when this debate raged and heres the reasons why the OEM lens should always be top of your list. 1) An OEM lens is designed from the inside out for your camera. There is guaranteed compatibility regarding linkages, modes of operation etc. An example. A Minolta lens may focus in one direction whilst even a good independent alternative may focus in the opposite way. This is a blasted nuisance if you have a manual focus body and have to change a lens in a hurry for sports etc. Sigma were the only independent who tooled up to get round this particular problem with their Synchro II lens range. Other things which were even more important with the advent of AF were AF speed which OEM lenses were always faster and future compatibility.Sigma designed their own chips when they launched lenses for the Minolta 7000 which didnt work with the 7000i and had to change the chip design and also change the chip for those who had bought the offending article. Minolta owners had no such problem. 2) An OEM lens is invariably better built. Independent lenses are made to one standard design and then adapted for every camera mount whereas the OEM lens is made specifically for that brand.Compare a Minolta 70-210mm F4 MD to even a top independent and youll see what I mean. 3) An OEM lens will almost always have better optics. This isnt always sharpness but other factors such as distortion, flare resistance, colour rendition and colour balance. Independent lenses tend to drift slightly between a warm and a cool colour balance depending on brand An OEM lens will have the precise colour balance of every other lens in the range. Minolta lenses for example are neutral throughout the range. This is particularly important when using transparency film. 4) Filter sizes. OEM lenses are usually a standard size for example Canon FD will stick to 52 or 58mm whilst Minolta went for 49mm or 55mm for the vast majority if their lenses.Independent lenses had a multitude of sizes which meant either repetitive filter purchasing or a host of adaptor rings. 5) Resale value. OEM lenses generally hold a much better value than even the best independents. You are unlikely to find a Minolta MD 70-210mm F4 for $15 whereas it is possible to do that even with the top independents. Well there is one exception I can think of which trumped all of this and made better lenses than even the camera manufacturers including even Leica. That was Angenieux but the prices were Leica prices and for that you might as well own a Leica body. They also pulled out with the advent of AF SLRs So there you have it. Hope this post has been of some use.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 09:18:14 +0000