Minilab lenses

Yes.

Yes, Noritsu lenses M42 mount through M40x0.75 to M42x1 adapter or mount modified to M42.

Many thanks! Fascinating... May I ask, how you know this stuff? Some personal interest/research or have you worked with any of these companies/machines?

Bit of both;) Tomioka / Yashica was a big deal in the equipment-starved USSR, and used Noritsu minilabs.

That‘s great! Don‘t want to stray away endlessly from the original topic, but would it be okay, if I asked a couple more questions in a dedicated thread (could be called 'Minilab lenses' to keep it broad, as it’s such a niche topic anyway…) in the 'adapted lens' sub? Perhaps @bobn2 or @AlanSh could even move that part of the thread there, if it‘s not too much work…?

Thank you very much!

Really interesting! So, you grew up in a fromer USSR country?

Do you own some of those Tomioka and/or Noritsu lenses? Or from other manufacturers, like Fuji/Agfa/Konica/Gretag/KIS/PhotoControl/Copal?
And have you ever heard about a possible connection between the later E90C series and Agfa? Because I've heard from several sellers of E90C lenses, that those were used in some Agfa minilabs. Unfortunately no definitive series, but most likely the MSC line.

I think so, we are here to discuss things ;)

Yes, Ukraine, the city of Odesa.

Left behind many years ago, moving away from Russia.

I remember only E42C / Agfa, it wasn't a Tomioka.

Sorry to hear that - must be hard on you what's happening. Are you still based in Ukraine? It's quite fascinating how many rare lenses ended up there, particularly USSR ones. I assume it's possible that many were made there as well. Are you familiar with the KOMZ ERA-1X lenses for instance?

I remember when I've first seen the E42C, I thought that might prove a deeper connection... but finally concluded that it must mean something different... Those Agfa MSC lenses (I have one) are "made in Germany", so likely made by Agfa themselves or rather by Staeble, a manufacturer they bought. Still, Agfa definitively used glass from external (mostly Japan based) manufacturers as well, particularly later on.

I made a quick (and rather unprecise) test today, but so far it seems the image circles match up pretty well with your suggested sizes. It's possible that they are specified for the close range they were used at though. Because, while some of them might work fine focused at infinity, they were never intended to be used at distance, I suppose.

Yes, and I think it should be unacceptable for every sane person.

I'm in Maryland.

But we digress...

Era ("Epoch") 7, 12, 13, 14, 14-1, 15, 23, Kazan Optical-Mechanical Plant. As far as I remember, they have M76х1 threads, except "23", where it is M42x1, and this lens has fixed aperture. They don't cover 24x36 corner to corner well enough on colour film, some are 18x24, heavy, need deep hoods because of flare, don't tolerate contre-jour, have visible chromatic aberrations, designed for orthochromatic film, and even with those films strong green filters were used.

It is. The problem is there aren't enough of us to rely on that alone.

Indeed!

Thank you very much! Yes, they are specialized lenses of course, not made for regular shooting... still, some of them seem to do better than expected according to Pierre Tizien:
pierretizien-photos.blogspot.com/2015/07/era-14-une-rarete-entre-dans-la.html

Also doesn't seem to have a problem covering full-frame and while noticeable, CAs are okay as well:
forum.mflenses.com/userpix/20205/big_4973_DSC05358_1.jpg
But I guess that can vary a lot among a series like that.

They are no minilab lenses though, so I don't want to stray away from the topic at hand again... 😅

Do you also know these Noritsu varifocal lenses:

Unassuming zooming? by simple.joy, on Flickr

Even though adapting can be a bit tricky, I like those a lot:

All light is born in stars by simple.joy, on Flickr

Newlywets by simple.joy, on Flickr

Diagnosis: loss of trust in medicine... by simple.joy, on Flickr

Just a quick note (have a very busy day today, sorry): 135 mm Era-14 is designed with 12 degrees AoV, for 24×36 mm it needs to be 18.2 degrees, meaning Era-14 is designed to cover 18x24 mm.

Thanks for the info - I've no doubt that's correct. Does that mean it's going to significantly vignette on 24x36mm, or just that it won't be sharp in the corners or even more riddled with CAs there?

The info is from the designer's (David Volosov) notes, I hadn't measure this lens as I had no reason to doubt him. A bit about Volosov:
ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2,%D0%94%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%A1%D0%B0%D0%BC%D1%83%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 (Google Translate does a decent job here.)

From my experience Era-14 vignetting is significant already at 15 mm radius.

From my notebooks, based on Volosov's notes and technical documents that came with the lenses:
Era-5: 25/1:3.5, 26 degrees, fixed aperture (Volosov published MTF up to 6 mm from the centre, test shots taken under incandescent light on Mikrat-VR / Микрат-ВР film), the intended frame, I suppose, is 9x12 mm
Era-7: 105/1:2.8, 11 degrees, 18x24 mm, (Volosov published MTF up to 10 mm from the centre, test shots taken using flash and GhS-18 / ЖС-18 dark yellow filter, 495 nm - ->, on Kodak HR plates)
Era-12: 125/1:4, 16 degrees, M76x1 (IMHO nearly acceptable CA on 24x36 mm, may have shiny white metal aperture blades, mine had blackening)
Era-13: 150/1:4.5, 17 degrees, 24x36 mm, M76x1 (covers 24x36 mm well on BW film, a bit too much CA on colour film for my taste)
Era-14 / 14-1: 135/1:2.8, 12 degrees, 18x24 mm, M76x1
Era-15: 125/1:4.5, 21 degree, M76x1
Era-23: 60/1:4, fixed aperture, M42x1, 24x36 (never tried one).

Excellent info - thank you very much!

Are you also familiar with one of these lenses?

I know of only one KOMZ (going by logo) 106 mm lens "Orion" (Paul Rudolph's Plasmat) OF-458 / Орион ОФ-458 106/1:5.6 fixed aperture. It was not a big deal to install a variable aperture into this lens. Sometimes it was marked as "100". Could be it

Many thanks - sounds very likely! The OF-458 was actually the lens a fellow flickr user suggested. He even translated the page he found for me to read:

But when I had a conversation with Pierre Tizien about it, he doubted the possibility because of the fixed aperture. I didn't know that installing an aperture was a possibility and wouldn't have suspected it, because both of these lenses felt very well made to me, not what I would have assumed from a modified lens.

I even got an PDF from this book or a part:

I think it is from David Volosov, but I assume perhaps not the latest version.

This is Yakovlev's lens catalogue part 1, supervised by Volosov, printed in Vavilov State Optical Institute (GOI / ГОИ).

OF-457, factory-modified:

OF-458, third-party modification:

Thank you very much - that‘s exactly it! I really appreciate it, now I finally have an answer to that question. So it‘s yet another microfilm recording lens. I have quite a few of those (like the Zeiss Dokumars for example) and all of them are pretty good.

Happy to help when I can ;)

I‘m really impressed by the range of your knowledge @IliahBorg - glad you‘re here! Particularly with partly automated machines like minilabs/copy cameras, scanners, microfilm cameras etc. so many people (including a big chunk of the ones who operated the machines in question apparently) don‘t know a single thing about the lenses in there.

Have you ever seen one of the Noritsu lenses like that shown above?