Canon R 35mm f/2.5

Guest

This lens is very solid as were generally most lenses from the early 1960s. lt focuses to about 14-18 inches which is useful in a wide-angle lens. I found in testing it that sharpness was pretty good at f2.5 although sharpness fall off at the corners. most of which was caused by curvature of field inherent in this lens. Thia affected sharpness at the corners only at close shooting distances—at distances over 20 ft. this lens corner sharpness was greatly improved. At f/8 sharpness was good throughout with only a little fall off in sharpness at the corners. There is no further improvement at f11 or f16. This 35mm was the widest lens available for the Flex series of cameras between 1959-1964. Super Canomatic R lenses fit on any R, FL, FD, nFD mount camera. However, FL, FD, nFD lenses cannot be mounted on Flex cameras without damaging the lens or camera or both. R lenses are coated. Coating on the 35mm is Magenta (on the 50mm f1.8 the coating is Amber). The filter size is 58mm, same as the 50mm, 85mm, 100mm and 135mm. It is a seven element lens. There are two aperture rings, one which presets that aperture, and the other for stop down viewing. I generally leave the second one wide open to aid focusing. Although the glass is very good on the R lenses, they tend not to hold up nearly as well as the FL and FD lenses. Mold/fungus/dust is commonplace. Image quality is better with my FL 35mm f3.5 or the nFD 35mm f2.8. There is no real reason to purchase one of these unless you own a Flex series camera or like to collect one of everything!