Kang Rinpoche S 600 F11.5 (Chinese Fujinon C 600mm )

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Originally Posted by Drew Wiley

But I suspect Oren is just about to intervene and shut the discussion down, and that's fine; he has a job to do too.

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Why do you suggest to stop the interesting discussion?
Every one could choose by himself, as Jim choosed a safer way, I choosed to taste it, someone choosed to look on wait and see, someone choosed to ignore it...




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Drew, If you are so against this lens existing, just don't buy it. Why try to force your opinion on others while shutting down their thoughts? Isn't the LF world big enough for a little competition? Since when is a new product a bad thing?

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Originally Posted by blue4130

Drew, If you are so against this lens existing, just don't buy it. Why try to force your opinion on others while shutting down their thoughts? Isn't the LF world big enough for a little competition? Since when is a new product a bad thing?

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Yes, almost every optics manufacturer stopped their lens production for LF and ULF beside of the golden Cooke. I believe we need more options although there are lots of used lenses on the market.

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There's nothing wrong with competition or someone new entering the arena. There is something wrong when there's the impression it's the same thing. It plainly isn't. But it might legitimately fill a very similar niche, which has yet to be proven. But glad someone found the discussion and banter interesting. Sure, I admit I'm playing devil's advocate, but that's part of sorting things out. I don't take web information at face value. It's as misleading as often as not. And if I bother people in this respect, they'd get skinned alive by certain very successful large format photographers not even participating on this forum who discuss their equipment almost like a religion. Some people enjoy that, some don't. No different than outdoor gear, or shop tools, or motorcycles, etc. I like refurbishing classic old enlargers, along with ways to significantly improve their performance, though I think I'm finally done doing that. Other people just want to buy one new and be done with it. I'm not forcing an opinion on anyone. It's a forum, for heaven's sake, where equipment is discussed from potentially different angles of view.

Pierre, while you're at it - take some more pics with your lens, you don't even need to show them here, and tell us more about your personal experience and results with the lens. It will be as authoritative as any other amateur opinion about it and you can make yourself the position of a first hand informer. How about it? Good luck!

So the Fujinon C 600mm F11.5 certainly seems to be a cult lens. 210mm Apo-Lanthar was another one of them. Got a chance to try one out back when and it was a really good lens but not worth its inflated price. Opted for a 210mm Nikkor with no regrets. Very seriously considered acquiring a Fujinon C 600mm a few years ago, but then found a mint 508mm f/7 Caltar in an Ilex #5 in mint condition for a mere fraction of the asking price for the 600mm Fujinon. Opted to acquire the slightly shorter 508mm Caltar. Little bit wider than the 600mm Fujinon but really not by all that much in practice. Plus the Caltar projects an image on my GG that looks like it is from a f/5.6 optic on my 8x10. Other alternatives for a Fujinon C 600mm F11.5 out there?

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Originally Posted by Greg

Other alternatives for a Fujinon C 600mm F11.5 out there?

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Kang Rinpoche S 600 F 11.5 (Chinese Fujinon C 600mm).

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Originally Posted by olegkasko

.... but it is some Chinese product and I doubt the quality.
Perhaps it is better to buy a cheaper older original Fujinon? It is about $3000 on eBay.
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I had the pleasure of buying some tools in Germany, with the Made in Germany label, for which I paid good money. After the sale, I found out that they were made in China. I then learned that manufacturing in China is very common for everything. They can produce the real deal, and knock off articles.

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Originally Posted by Drew Wiley

No guild or family cabinet shop making wood cameras, no matter how nice, is analogous to lens manufacture, which is a high-tech enterprise. So please stop citing these examples. They're irrelevant. It's like trying to compare the quality of a hand-forged Japanese chisel or sword to a Smart phone. There are also often international collaborations in such undertakings, both financially and technologically. The one kind of equipment I never alter are lenses. I have neither the knowledge, equipment, or funding. The only lens manufacturer in this town has a budget running in the billions, and they're full of trade secrets, and serve secret surveillance and military clients. Everyone know they specialize in aspherics, but so what - it's like imagining you can build a Ferrari because you know it uses wheels ! On the other hand, if I were younger and had the will, I could very well set up a small high-quality field camera manufacturing base of my own, with limited output. In fact, in this day and age, you could even acquire much of the basic tooling for the cost of a single pre-made ULF camera! A completely different business model, with a completely different skill set. And nobody like me is "automatically assuming" anything about the particular lens in question. But having spent many millions of dollars of other peoples money in the trenches, and having to win far more often than you lose, if you're going to stay in business, I can legitimately point out some potential minefields worth investigating before you blithely mosey through them.

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The 'relevance' of that post has to do with Chinese quality at least sometimes being quite good. That's what my post was addressing.

True. And it's unfortunate that if even 1% percent of plot of land contains actual land mines, it still warrants caution. In this case, I don't have any preconception about the specific lens in question, but do point out how nothing presented so far tells us what it really does. A token web posting of alleged sharpness, one brand versus another, might only indicate how a sheet of film happened to randomly lie flatter in one holder versus another. And we know nothing about the color correction of the lens (I use my 600C mainly for
color work); and the degree of color correction indeed affects B&W sharpness vs fringing because colored contrast filters come into play. Most of us can't realistically attend Photokina, and even if we did, it's somewhat of a "trial balloon" venue, testing the wind to
find out if there is market potential for a new product or not.