Thursday, July 21, 2016

Meyer-Optik Trioplan 50mm f2.9

In case you have not heard, Meyer-Optik has crowd-funded and released a "new" 50mm f2.9 Trioplan lens.  Great news for those who love the soap bubble bokeh, but you will have to shell out a cool $600.  The Trioplan is a very simple optical design based on the Cooke Triplet, and there are huge number of lenses with Triplet design in different focal lengths.  $600 is a ridiculous amount of money for a simple lens.  You can buy the same lens in the used market for a lot less.  In the mean time, a lot of alternative are available, but let's get on with the old 50mm f2.9 Trioplan.

Meyer-Optik Trioplan 50mm f2.9 & Sony A7

This lens came from a Beltica folder camera that I bought from the Trunk Sale organized by the Photographic Historical Society of Canada (PHSC) last Sunday.  The camera (lens, actually, since all the shutter/timing etc are in the lens, not the camera) still works perfectly, but I took it out (but is easy to put back in if needed) and adapted it with an M42 mount.  The lens has its own focus mechanism which is good from about 3 feet (1 meter) to infinity.  I am not a big fan of very long minimum focus distance, such as this one, so I put the lens on a Pentax focus helicoid and uses the helicoid to focus instead.  If I really want macro level close focus, I could use both the focus on lens and the helicoid, but I found that the lens' bokeh is destroyed/masked when focuses too close; all you will see is very shallow depth of field with pretty much uniformly blurred background, which to me, is boring.
Meyer-Optik Trioplan 50mm f2.9 & Sony A7

The lens is coated and looks quite nice, but still very susceptible to flare, even with a hood in place.  Care should be taken when shooting against the light.

As expected, the Trioplan 50mm f2.9 produces very similar rendering as other Triplets, but each has its own unique traits.  For comparison, I used the Balda-Werk Rigonar 50mm f3.5 quite a bit, which is also a triplet.  I much prefer the Trioplan.  Perhaps the extra 1/3 stop of light makes a bit of a difference, but I find the Trioplan much more pleasing with less harshness in the out of focus area.



Like most Triplet lenses I have used, the corners of most of them are not very good, even when stopped way down.  So this is not really a landscape kind of lens.  The center of the lens, however, is quite sharp.

I quite like shooting with this lens, especially when mounted on the butterly smooth Pentax focus helicoid.  I like the rendering of the lens, but most importantly, I didn't have to pay the exorbitant price for one.

5 comments:

  1. Looks like this lens can be bought for $150 on ebay. But then you also need an adapter. How does the bokeh compare to a Leitz Summar 5cm f/2?

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    1. My version of the lens came with a folder camera so it should be much cheaper than the Exakta or other mounts. It's extremely easy to adapt this one. Just a couple of step-up/step-down rings plus a 12-17mm focus helicoid. I haven't used the Summar 5cm f2 much yet, but it has a much smoother bokeh than this triplet.

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  2. Far more people have money but no skills or interest in getting skills. So to them 600 is probably cheap.

    I won't be buying one :-)

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    1. apart from the skills factor, most hipsters are just blind consumers that are happy to fork out their excess cash for whatever trend is hot at the moment. I won't be buying one since I have a much cheaper original (Exa mount) already. $600 seems to be the price of a lame iPhone, so the price fits the demographic :-)

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    2. Some people simply do not know alternatives exist, even in the age where internet search should be second nature as breathing.

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