I posted earlier about my acquisition of an Exakta VXIIa, Exa and three lenses. I’ve already provided a little more detail on the Lydith. Now it’s the turn of the Biotar.

I’ve haven’t tried it that much yet, but from an initial test (the inevitable flowers) I think I will probably use it quite a lot. My copy is quite large, rather heavy and more than a little “beat up” (for example the filter threads have been damaged and now won’t accommodate a screw in filter (doesn’t bother me much as I don’t use filters). As mentioned in the earlier post the auto preset level is rather sluggish and I’m sure it wouldn’t stop down the lens fast enough to be useful. This doesn’t bother me much either as I’ll probably mostly use the lens on my Sony NEX 5N and usual subjects are stationary and give me lots of time to stop down manually.

There’s an “interesting” (and animated) discussion on photo.net concerning the relationship between the Biotar and the Zeiss Planar – interesting that is if you like Kingslake‘s “A History of the Photographic Lens” for bedtime reading (as I do). As far as I can tell the Biotar is a variant of the original Planar design.

More posts on this lens to follow.

Update: Rick Drawbridge recently did a post on this lens in Testing the Biotar on photo.net