Topcon UV Topcor Lenses

It's often confusing when it comes to Topcon Topcor lenses, because it could be one of the two mounts: modified Exakta or UV mount.  The lenses themselves are physically very different between mounts.

The Topcor UV mount is the very cheap line, with aperture controls on the camera body, but thankfully, focusing is still done on the lens.  With the lens detached from the camera, the UV mount lens looks incomplete; they look like half lenses.  This is the whole point of this line of camera/lenses.  To be made cheap.  There are very few lenses available for the UV mount.  I have the 50mm f1.9, 53mm f2, 35mm f3.5, and 135mm f4.  Other UV lenses made were 28mm f4, 100mm f4, and 200mm f4.  Not many, and no fast lenses other than the 53mm f2.

Two Topcors. Left: Topcor 5.8cm f1.8. Right: UV Topcor 50mm f1.9

Mounting these lenses could be a problem.  As far as I know, there are no proper made adapters to use them on digital cameras.  You can make one with the mount from the camera, like I did here, and this is probably the only way to go.  I tried the lenses and I was not blown away by their image quality.  They are pretty much run of the mill quality in the same era as other lenses in the same class.  However, the 53mm f2 have pretty nice bokeh.

UV Topcor 53mm f2 on Sony A7

Spent an hour today shooting with the 53mm f2 UV Topcor.  The lens is quite sharp in the centre at f2, but the corners are kind of mushy.  Since aperture is controlled from the camera body, there is no easy way to control it on the lens when adapted to digital, so I just shot everything wide open.  That's not a great loss for me, as I like shooting wide open.  The only thing I couldn't do is the test the smaller apertures and see how the lens performs.

Overall, not really bad for a cheap lens.

All pictures below were taken with UV Topcor 53mm f2 & Sony A7.

F2 at infinity.  Not bad at the centre.

Flare -- Even the best lenses could not do much better in this situation.

Growing out of the wood --  Bokeh #1.

Milkweed Pods -- Bokeh #2

More Milkweed Pods

Make Your Own Topcon Mount Adapter

Since I got the Topcor lenses from the camera show, I have fallen in love with these lenses. I do have other Torcor lenses before these ones, but they come in a completely different mount; not the modified Exakta mount, but one that has aperture control on the camera body, a la DKL. This particular mount, like the Exakta, does not provide a secured and tight fit when a lens is mounted; except it's worse than Exakta. The lenses themselves are well made and I have been scratching my head for months on how to mount them to my camera. As far as I know, nobody makes a mount adapter for it.

The other Topcon - very similar to the DKL mount. Aperture control is on the camera body.

Today it dawned on me that I had a broken Topcon body. Why not make an adapter from the original mount? Why didn't I think of that before? Well, in fact, I tried this with a Kodak Reflex with DKL mount, but no cigar. The mount is too intricately intertwined with other parts of the body that it was difficult to separate the mount with the aperture control intact. But, what have I got to lose? It didn't take long before sweet success arrived! The mount is much simpler than the DKL and aperture control stays unaffected after mount is removed from the body.

Gruesome body parts. The mount we want is on the right.

After the mount is removed, I JB Welded a 58-49mm filter ring (don't have a 58-52mm handy) to the rear of the mount, added a 49-52mm step up ring, and mounted the adapter to the very thin focus helicoid. Very unfortunately, I can't use my favourite Yeenon helicoid as the mount is about 2mm too thick. How I wish I had a metal lathe to shaved off these two millimeters. But, this will do in the meantime. The mount adapter is not perfect. the filter ring I glued/welded on is slightly jagged and is not completely flat, cause the left side of the picture to be slightly softer than the right side. I will need to find a better solution for this. It's workable for the time being.

UV Topcor 35mm f3.5 with mount on helicoid. Note the filter rings.

The other Topcors: Mount, 53mm f2, 35mm f3.5, 135mm f4.

Gorgeous, eh?