Anyone have any experience, insight, etc with the Kobalux 21/2.8 or 28/3.5? Not even sure what the price difference is, but wanted to know if its even worth investigating.

-- John (jbee193@aol.com), April 18, 2002

Answers

Here is a website with some info, including photos made with the 21mm lens. Kobalux 21mm info

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), April 18, 2002.

kobalux has been around for along time. the 21 (current version) is a shockingly good and well built lens for the money (c.$400). it is available through adorama last time i checked. voigtlander stole a lot of their thunder when they launched their series of w.a. LTM lenses. i think the build quality and optics of the current kbalux lenses is slightly better than the cosina/voigt counterparts. an old kobalux lens, often converted to m mount, is the 85mm. a great lens.

-- roger michel (michel@tcn.org), April 18, 2002.

I used the 28--it was a good lens but I didn't like the 1 meter minimum focus.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), April 18, 2002.

Keep in mind that the Adorama one is the 2nd gen, not the current 3rd gen. Dante has the list of improvements (and build quality) from 2nd to 3rd gens. on his website.

-- Charles (cbarcellona@telocity.com), April 18, 2002.

The 2nd generation 21/2.8 is a fabulous lens, with almost no distortion and sharp to the corners even wide open. My only gripe is that the aperture click stop at full units instead of the more useful half stop, but you can still shoot at half stop even without the click stops. Another drawback is the minimum focus of 1m but can very often be overcome with DOF. Build quality is very good, much better than the VC variety. The finder for the 21 is a huge piece with front diameter about 36mm or so, but otherwise is very good. No flare and with clearly visible brightlines with close range correction line. So, to sum up, i kind of like this lens. Hope this is helpful. Cheers.

-- Steven Fong (steven@ima.org.sg), April 18, 2002.

I've been very happy with the Adorama version of the 28. I particularly like its small size (somewhat offset by the huge, but excellent, finder. My only complaint is thay it vignettes slightly with a standard screw-in filter. I guess it needs the WA variety

-- Robert Marvin (marvbej@earthlink.net), April 19, 2002.

Thanks gang. If I pull the trigger I will probably go with the 28 so I can do w/o the finder as I have a .72 TTL.

-- john (jbee193@aol.com), April 19, 2002.