Industar-61L/Z 2.8/50 review

Industar-61 L/Z MC is a very sharp lens.  It is not surprisingly that  all the industry  performed on the optical scheme Tessar,  has the other name «Eagle eye.»

The first impression is that they are  really, deep-set glass and the small size of the holes resemble exactly Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 2.8/50. The lens  has only 4 lenses in 3 groups.

Note: The lens was produced in different versions for different types of cameras: like SLR and rangefinder. It will be  very troublesome to use industar-61L and industar-61 L/D on SLR cameras, as it is a rangefinder lens options.

Because of its excellent sharpness and form factor,  the lens is great for macro photography using extension tubes. Owing to this fact,   it is used not only as an usual lenses , but also as  macro lens.

The focal length  in 50 mm is  used on crop matrices. Thus, it  gives you the equivalent of 75mm for Nikon (1.5 x) or 80mm (Canon 1.6 x), which allows to use it  as a portrait lens. Sharpness at 2.8 is excellent, but the strength of  DOF is not so large, so  obtained portraits don’t  really suffer with unnecessary sharpness.

The lens has good transmission contrast and resolution even at the edges of the frame (on a crop matrix).  The resolution  center/edge  is 45/28 l/mm. The side is  plastic, but because of the  aperture  structure it seems that in the background there  is a mesh that has eroded.  For portraits this  is not the best option. Side and the back light keeps tolerable, but not great.

The disadvantages are:

1. The small aperture. The aperture of Industar   according to its optical scheme, aims to achieve a sharp image and not to increase aperture.
2. Number of diaphragm blades only 6 pieces.
3. Front thread — 49mm

The advantages:

1. Excellent sharpness of the classic Tessar’s scheme, sometimes better known as Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar. It gives sharpness as at close and long range focus. Incidentally, the words «CZJ Tessar» still can be seen on the mobile phone cameras, especially Nokia, which puts 12MP on mobile phones and proudly signed The CZJ Tessar.
2. A good opportunity to use for macro photography (in the presence of the extension tubes).
3. Affordable price
4. Multicoated.
5. Works with full-frame cameras, for a pending upgrade with Chronotech matrices on FF.
6. Metal corpus.

This is a great sharp lens. It does not have a huge aperture, but it can shoot good macro with macromolecule.