Mrs. D wanted to visit a garden centre yesterday, and I decided to walk the couple of hundred yards up the road to an overbridge that Spans the M6 toll road. I was wondering what lens to use when I realized that I’d spent a whole £89 on a 300mm Yashica lens around 20 years ago. I dug it out of its dusty hideaway and attached it to the necessary converter. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting anything particularly wonderful from it – which meant that I ended up pleasantly surprised.
Yashica lenses were always a little bit in the shade compared with the range of Zeiss lenses available for Contax cameras, and the ones I own are the focal lengths that I used less. But if the 300mm optic is anything to go by they’re not at all bad: the contrast is quite low, but the resolution is remarkably high.
Of course, a manual focus lens with a maximum aperture of f/5.6 has limited applications and I’m probably not going to be taking it to the next air show I visit. But I can see it getting added to my luggage for holidays, and changing my general approach of not carrying a lens longer than 85mm. I may even dust off (quite literally) my 200mm f/4, as well.
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