Tuesday 20 March 2012

The Rikenon, XR and P

The notorious Rikenon's have a bad name in the market only because of one little pin on these babies. The 'P' labelled Rikenons sometimes get jammed on Pentax cameras and are painful to dismount. Does that mean these optical gems cannot be used on any other camera?
The answer is that not all Rikenons have the evil pin, it's only the 'P' labelled ones. And optically all of them work wonderfully on other cameras and their quality is sometimes even compared to the Pentax Taks and Super Taks except the flare control is not as good as the Taks. With the prices of CZJ Flektogon and Super Taks so inflated, Rikenons are the underdogs at the moment for manual focus enthusiasts.

There are a few versions of these:
The XR versions are the ones with better optical quality. The XR and the P labelled models are essentially of the same optical grade and image quality the only difference being the pin appears on the P model for use in AV mode on Pentax cameras. The 'XR L' is a plastic body variant of XR. While I am yet to find much information about the 'S' variant.

The XR Rikenon 50mm f2.0 (and hence the Rikenon P 50mm f2.0) is said to be the sharpest lens in this range of any brand!



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4 comments:

  1. JimR 'Longviewer'14 April 2012 at 18:47

    I have several very nice Rikenon lenses, including the XR-S f/2 above and a Sears 50/1.4 that looks identical to a standard XR. I really like the 28mm f/2.8P and the XR 70-150 f/4 also. I use them mostly on my K-5 but have an adaptor for the G1 also.

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  2. Gman19 October 2012 at 20:12

    I also have the XR 70-150 f/4 and like it more than my smc-M 75-150 f/4.

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  3. Gary Nielson24 May 2016 at 07:39

    I have two Rikenon P lenses that I intend to use on my Sony NEX digital camera with a K-mount to E-mount. I bought two adapters, one for each, and intend to just leave them on. Do I have to worry about this? If the lenses were to get stuck to the adapter that would be OK since I only intend to use them with the adapter. Is there any other damage that could occur that I need to be aware of or will I be just fine?

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    Replies
    1. Fahad5 June 2016 at 13:49

      Hi Gary, in my personal experience leaving the adapter on for extremely long durations has never never resulted in the adapter being stuck or any other damage to the lens. You should be fine.

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