Vivitar compact 135mm
Ponder & Best's computer keeps very busy! This actually does seem to be a fresh design for 1969, reflecting P&B's increasing involvement in their Japanese suppliers' design process.
I'll leave it to you to evaluate how "compact" this lens actually is; but the 4.5-foot minimum focus is indeed a cut above the norm.
I got my own copy of this lens in one of those "whoops" eBay lowball-bid incidents. But it arrived with sticky aperture blades. While I did eventually succeed in cleaning and reassembling the lens, as I recall my wisdom from that experience was that opening from the back was a mistake (the click mechanism for the aperture ring has an incredibly tiny spring and ball bearing). Taking care to note the original orientations of threaded parts up front, it was much easier to extract and clean the aperture blades from that end (using lighter fluid).
Vivitar compact 135mm
Ponder & Best's computer keeps very busy! This actually does seem to be a fresh design for 1969, reflecting P&B's increasing involvement in their Japanese suppliers' design process.
I'll leave it to you to evaluate how "compact" this lens actually is; but the 4.5-foot minimum focus is indeed a cut above the norm.
I got my own copy of this lens in one of those "whoops" eBay lowball-bid incidents. But it arrived with sticky aperture blades. While I did eventually succeed in cleaning and reassembling the lens, as I recall my wisdom from that experience was that opening from the back was a mistake (the click mechanism for the aperture ring has an incredibly tiny spring and ball bearing). Taking care to note the original orientations of threaded parts up front, it was much easier to extract and clean the aperture blades from that end (using lighter fluid).