Vivitar Cult Classic Camera Lenses
Innovative Optical Design Created Series 1 Photographic Lenses
American computer aided design coupled with Japanese manufacturing techniques produced in the 1970s a number of camera lenses destined to become cult classics today.
An American regional photographic distribution company, Ponder and Best, decided in the 1970s to commission their own brand of equipment. They chose a new independent consulting optical design company, Opcon Associates who developed their own proprietary software for designing zoom lenses and using aspherical optical surfaces.
This resulted in the Vivitar Series 1 lenses and a string of patents attesting to the underlying technological advances in the new lenses.
Vivitar then contracted specialist Japanese optical companies to manufacture the designs, with Kino Precision Industries (Kiron) the first of a range of companies to make Vivitar lenses.
The Series 1 lenses were Vivitar’s premium professional quality lenses and commanded a consequential high retail price. While the lenses were very good, it took too long for their reputation to build in the market place and they did not achieve the sales they deserved. Subsequent Series 1 lenses became more market oriented with convenience features and lower prices, at the expense of ultimate quality.
Serious photographers continue to use the lenses and extol their virtues. Second-hand examples in good condition sell quickly, as they represent good value for money compared to new lenses.
Common Features
The lenses are solidly constructed, giving then a substantial look and making them heavier than modern equivalents. The three examples in this article all feature quirky or usual maximum apertures where optical performance overrode any notion of conforming to photographer’s established expectations.
The two zooms are of the one-touch type, where the one ring is for manual focusing and zooming. Moving the ring forwards or backwards changes the focal length, while rotating the same ring adjusts the focus. Modern lenses, particularly with the advent of auto focus, use two separate rotating rings for focus and zoom.
Constant aperture is another characteristic of these Vivitar zooms. The effective aperture of many modern zoom lenses becomes smaller as the focal length increases. Even in the latest lenses the ability to maintain a constant aperture over the whole zoom range is usually only found in a few professional quality lenses.
70-210mm f3.5 Zoom
This is the best known of the early Vivitar lenses and was at the forefront of the popularization of zoom lenses in 35mm photography. It achieves cult status because of the groundbreaking role it played in the development of the zoom lens rather than outright optical quality.
Zoom lens design has come a long way and most early zooms are poor by modern standards. The Vivitar is still reasonable compared to modern consumer grade zooms, but suffers from excessive flare.
35-85mm Vari-Focal f2.8
This is not a true zoom lens, hence the Vari-Focal name. A zoom lens maintains the same focus as the focal length changes. However, this lenses needs refocusing every time the focal length changes.
The designers sacrificed some ease of use to make a lens that is still producing stunning images on modern digital cameras.
200mm f3 Prime
This is still an outstanding lens and the images are sharp and punchy. The standard aperture for a professional lens of this type is f2.8. This design came in with the oddball f3 aperture, indicating another design decision where optical performance won over the marketing desire to conform.
The focusing action is smooth, and with the large aperture, it is a good lens for sports photography when the light is low on overcast days. Of course it is manual focusing only; however, in dull conditions many autofocus lens will have to be manually focused anyway.
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