This is a short pictorial review of the Pentacon 29mm f/2.8 Multi Coated manual lens on the Sony NEX 6 mirrorless camera.
This is another M42 mount lens which represents incredible value for money if you are prepared to do a little more setup and manual intervention in your photography. You won't get lots of automatic settings, but you can get some brilliant images if you just apply a little thought and can use the focus ring!
The normal cost for one of these lenses ranges from about £5 to about £40 on eBay, depending on when you buy it and who you buy it from. You will normally pay less for an example bought in an auction rather than with a 'buy in now' offer, but I doubt you would pay over that range for a good example.
On an APS-C crop sensor camera like the NEX 6 the lens is an equivalent focal length of 43.5 mm, so it becomes a widish standard lens.
I used this lens on my NEX 6 to take some pictures about Stevenage today in Jpeg+Raw mode. Normally I would only shoot in Raw mode, but this gives me the ability to show the 'out of camera' performance which may be useful to some people.
Pentacon 28mm f/2.8 JPeg Pictures
The camera jpeg images were on the most part slightly over exposed. On most of these shots I had to reduce the exposure by about half a stop when I produced the Lightroom Processed version. Other than that, the images show a tendency for softness in the corners when wide open but this reduces as the aperture is stopped down. The CA seems pretty well controlled and being a prime lens there is little if any distortion.
Once the raw pictures had been processed, there were a few images which I would be happy to use, although this lens is certainly not of the quality of a Takumar 28 mm f/3.5. As well as adjust the overall exposure, in many cases I reduced the highlights, boosted the contrast and added a bit of midrange definition with the clarity adjustment.
Pentacon 28mm f/2.8 Lightroom Pictures
In conclusion this is a reasonable lens which is good value for money if you can find one, as I did, for a few pounds. It is not of the quality of the Takumar 28 mm f/3.5, but will provide reasonable image quality if you shoot in raw and put a little effort into processing your shots.
