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[OM] Re: Which lens would you choose

Subject: [OM] Re: Which lens would you choose
From: "Scott Peden" <scotpeden@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2007 07:44:27 -0800
I have the Tokina wit the red tilde and the RMC, so that boils down to just
fancy salesmanship for a Multi coated lens.

Thanks for the extra data and history, means that bit of knowledge is likely
to 'stick' as I have more reality on what it means and WHY, me being the
sort of person that is either 100% Why or, just let me drive it, OK?

Of to Monterey Bay Aquarium!

Pic to follow! (I hope there is something good enough to post :-)

Scott


-----Original Message-----
From: olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Moose
Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2007 1:27 AM
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [OM] Re: Which lens would you choose

Scott Peden wrote:
> I have RMC on a Tokina 28 mm 1:2.8
>
> I too would be interested to know if that is a standard designation that
is
> a step up from a MC.
>   
No. When multi-coating started, the major camera manufacturers mostly 
just so labeled their lenses, first often spelled out, then often 
becoming simply MC.

Pentax and some of the independent lens makers used their onw special 
designations, essentially, one assumes, as marketing . So the Pentax 
50/1.4, for example, first became the SUPER-MULTI-COATED TAKUMAR, THEN 
THE SMC TAKUMAR. Oly went the low key, way, adding simply MC and later, 
when it could be assumed all lenses were multi-coated, dropped even that 
designation.

Tokina's version of the MC label was RMC and a little red logo sort of 
like a top and bottom tilde with two vertical lines connecting them. 
This came before the AT-X (Advanced Technology) line of lenses. When 
AT-X came along, there was nothing in the manuals, at least the ones I 
have, about RMC, but the label and logo remained on the front ring of 
the lenses.

The other lovely confusing thing is new optical glasses. Some called 
them ED, Extra low Dsispersion, SD, Super low Dispersion, etc., and 
sometimes indicated their presence with thin color bands on the lenses. 
So most of the AT-X Tokinas have a thin red line near the front, but 
wait a minute, at least two SZ-X series Tokinas are RMC with logo on the 
front ring and have the red ring and SD glass. And there are AT-Xs with 
yellow rings, instead of red, and ... aaaahh.

It's essentially impossible to tell what's in many MF lenses unless you 
have the manual or can read tea leaves. But generally, any marking 
including "MC" means multi-coated and any littel colored ring near the 
front means some sort of then new glass formula in  most often one element.

In the end, it matters little, all but the very earliest zooms ar MC, 
for the simple reason that MC is required for the many element designs 
to avoid unacceptable light loss. And you can pretty much rely on the 
Tamron SP (Super Performance), Tokina AT-X and Sigma APO as being their 
best lenses. There are others in their lines that are good, but those 
lines aren't uniformly so.

Unfortunately, even that isn't always a clear indication of the best 
lenses in any line. Gary's tests and the Cult classics site agree that 
the pre AT-X Tokina RMC 28-85 zoom is slightly superior in performance 
to the AT-X that came next, but the AT-X is smaller, .lighter and 
focuses closer. So which is the better lens? Depends on what is most 
important to the user.

The most useful single source of info about all this is the Cult 
Classics site <http://medfmt.8k.com/third/index.html>. Gary's lens tests 
are also often useful, as he tested many third party MF lenses for OM 
mount <http://members.aol.com/olympusom/lenstests/default.htm>.

Moose

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