Sankyo Kaki Tokyo Komura 135mm 1:3.5

[belgiumreporter]

Together and burried beneath some other stuff came this Sankyo Kaki Tokyo Komura 135mm 1:3.5 in 39mm leica mount.

After doing some research it was of some surprise to me at just what Komura use to make lens wise. Apparantly they had within their range a lot of very wide apperture lenses, some of them are offered now on Ebay at outrageous prices. Still i'm not an expert on classic lenses and maybe these prices are justified considering the rarity of such lenses.

Anyway the modest 135 i've got is very well made and has a 12 bladed apperture wich should give some nice "bokeh" i haven't tried it yet as there seems to be some slight haze on the back of the front element wich should be taken care of before any serious testing. From what i've read people who have used the lens are raving about it's colour rendition and comparing it with the best Takumars, we'll see...

Here it is mounted on the canon L2.


Komura went out of buisness in the beginning of the 80-ties, they didn't seem to have been able to cope with rendition to zoom lenses wich became popular back then.

BTW, "old" 135 mm's are easy to find, try finding a vintage 35mm or shorter, i know wide angles were difficult to produce, but they didn't seem to have been that popular in the 50-ties. from what i've seen price wise in old price lists a 35mm cost around the same amount as a 135 so that couldn't have been the reason for their scarcety.

[belgiumreporter]

I've tried the lens anyway haze or no haze :-) 
This is the whole frame:


And these are cut outs at 100%:





The lens is pretty good wide open, still lacking some contrast (due to the haze?) stopped down to 5.6 shows a more contrasty and sharper image. Not bad for this old timer Komura !

[julio1fer]

I have one of those that came mounted on a Leica IIIa gotten locally. Never shot with it, I hate to use long lenses in RF cameras.

Those are decent results.

[belgiumreporter]

Aug 12, 2021 21:22:14 GMT -5 julio1fer said:

I have one of those that came mounted on a Leica IIIa gotten locally. Never shot with it, I hate to use long lenses in RF cameras.

Those are decent results.

I'm no big fan of 135mm either but Juno my agapornis (love bird) does seem to like the Komura and is inspecting it by trying to get a taste of the sunshade

[John Farrell]

I have a 35mm f2.5 W-Komura, preset diaphragm, in M42 mount. When I bought it, it had a home made M42 to Yashica Pentamatic adapter fitted to it.