Older, silver Lomo lenses -- any good?

[Nick Brown]

I don't think I've ever seen or heard any discussion about these older, silver-finish Lomo lenses. Here's a picture of one from Olex's site:

Anyone know if they are worthwhile?

[Aapo Lettinen]

I have the older silver 28 and the 50.  Don't use the 28 much because I have the newer much better 28 retrofocus version but the 50 I use a lot. It has different coatings than the newer black versions and it does not perfectly match the newer lenses for that reason (lower overall contrast, a bit warmer, slightly different CA, flares more and different flare) but it is good for closeups anyway if you can handle the older coatings. If shooting a lot in high contrast situations like lots of silhouette and backlight stuff then you may like the newer version more

[Nick Brown]

Thanks for the info. It's not surprising to hear that the coatings are much more basic on these 1950s models. Can I assume that they aren't as sharp wide open as the 1970s/80s lenses? Curious what to know how the flares differ. Do you have any footage or stills from these lenses online?

[Aapo Lettinen]

I have shot most of the footage with them with diffusion filters so the shots are not directly comparable. I can try to arrange some test material in January which is shot clean so that the results show better. I don't have the black version of the 50mm but I have the 35/2.3 black version which can be tested against the 50/2.3 silver version

[Nojus Drasutis]

On 12/20/2021 at 7:31 AM, Nick Brown said:

I don't think I've ever seen or heard any discussion about these older, silver-finish Lomo lenses. Here's a picture of one from Olex's site:

Anyone know if they are worthwhile?

Are you talking about silver LOMO or silver Lenkinap lenses? i feel they also have some differences from each other,

I have lenkinap 22, 28, 35, and they also feel like mentioned above - warmer and a bit to a greenish tint, more flares, less sharpness, less contrast, than OST 19 lomos i am familiar with

This is one short example of Lenkinap 28mm.  I shot it when i was on the first year of bachelor in cinematography, so not the best example, but this is what i have and maybe it will be helpful. It's shot on Red one MX without any diffusion.

 

[Nick Brown]

I guess I'm not really clear on the differences between Lomo-branded lenses and Lenkinap. Apparently some of the Lenkinap lenses have brass focusing rings and focus in the same direction as Nikkor lenses? How do you like your set? Any reason you went the Lenkinap route instead of Lomo? How do you feel about their usability?

Beautiful film! Between the camera and the lens, there's so much soul and character in that image. The reason I'm considering Lomos is because I'm interested in pairing them with my Red One MX too.

On 12/27/2021 at 3:59 AM, aapo lettinen said:

I have shot most of the footage with them with diffusion filters so the shots are not directly comparable. I can try to arrange some test material in January which is shot clean so that the results show better. I don't have the black version of the 50mm but I have the 35/2.3 black version which can be tested against the 50/2.3 silver version

I'd love to see any kind of visual reference. I'm still learning the differences but it seems that a silver finish doesn't necessarily mean that it's an older lens necessarily. I think the oldest lenses were the RO/PO prefixed lenses, but they also came with a black finish. And some have serial numbers that indicate they were made in the 1960s as well. That applies to the rest of the Lomo lenses as well, with earlier version numbers appearing with later serial numbers too.