Auto Sears 55mm f1.4 - This is a Sleeper Lens
Hello my vintage lens enthusiasts! Today we’re looking at the Auto Sears 55mm f1.4. I bought this lens on Ebay looking for a cheap no-name brand lens but after taking some shots with it I realized this lens is a sleeper. It punches well above its price point. Wide open it’s a little soft but stopped down this lens is really sharp. It produces a nice crisp image with a beautiful soft out of focus background. It turns out that Sears simply rebranded lenses made by renowned Japanese manufacturers Mamiya and Tomioka. If you’re looking to buy a sharp and fast vintage lens without that high vintage lens price this is a lens to consider. All the photos in this video were shot with a Circular Polarizer stacked on top of a Tiffen Enhancing filter.
Filters
For this shoot I stacked a B+W polarizing filter on top of a Tiffen Enhancing Filter. All the shots in this post were taken with these two filters stacked. The enhancing filter really brings out the warm tones and makes them more vibrant. I mounted this M42 mount lens to my Canon RF camera with the K&F Concept M42 to RF Adapter. For more info about the enhancing filter check out these blog posts.
Auto Sears 55mm f1.4 Sample Photos
I was really surprised by the image quality produced by this lens. The optics are so good when stopped down that some of these shots look like modern glass. If you look at the first two shots in this gallery you can see the first shot has a lot more flare and that’s because in the second shot I was using my my hand to block the sun from hitting the lens. So one learning experience here is that this lens is probably best used with a lens hood because that 6 blade aperture doesn’t produce a pleasing lens flare. In picture 9 I show the difference between this lens shot wide open at f1.4 and stopped down to f5.6. Vintage lenses not being pin sharp wide open is normal. This brings me to shooting this lens wide open and bokeh. The bokeh looks really nice wide open but I struggled to get the main subject tack sharp at the same time. Maybe I need a tripod or maybe this lens just isn’t sharp wide open. I’ll have to play with it some more to find out. Overall the value for money on this lens is amazing. I would recommend it if you are looking for a fast 50mm at a good price.
