- Produced Japan
- Mount Pentax PK-A
- Focal length 80-200, macro 1:4
- Aperture range f4.5/5.6-22 plus A for AE on Pentax cameras
- Focal range 1.1m to infinity
- Filter thread 49mm
- Elements 11 in 8 groups
- Aperture blades 6
- Weight 390g
- multicoated
- one-touch zoom
- no built-in hood
Overview
My very first ever auxiliary lens, which I bought on the road in 1991. My then-girlfriend and I were on our way from San Diego to Seattle and then points east and southeast, and I knew I needed more from my brand new Pentax P30t kit than the 50mm normal lens I had just bought in San Francisco. Like the Pentax MX I didn’t buy before we left, I had priced other lenses and picked the Albinar at a store called Best to be the long lens for me. Now, the Best store in San Diego didn’t have the MX by the time I screwed myself up to go get it (I didn’t know it had been discontinued), which is why I ended up in San Francisco without a camera at all. See the P30t page for the rest of that story. Anyway, it turns out that there was a Best in Eugene, Oregon, not too far from where I lived for a time, and I insisted we stop and buy my little present to myself. And as it happens Best was next to a GI Joe’s where we ended up getting some additional camping gear for that leg of the trip…yet another story….
Had I known things like the basic rule about shutter speed and focal length (handhold at no slower than 1/filmspeed) I would have got better pictures of the bison at Yellowstone, I think — at least I should have used 400 speed film instead of 100! So I thought maybe it was the off-brand lens that was the issue, and it languished… Then I did a test prior to preparing to sell it and discovered that on a tripod it was actually an excellent performer. (Come to think of it, why didn’t I buy a tripod in the first place?)
I don’t know much about Albinar the company, except that they made lenses for Pentax, Canon, and Minolta (and possibly Nikon as well), as well as 2x converters and flashes. Come to think of it, I don’t even know what the ADG stands for. Albinar Design Group? They were probably a contract company that had other OEMs do the actual manufacturing, like Vivitar and Kalimar did. I do know that it was made in Japan but that’s about it. They no longer exist as far as I can tell.
Special Notes
No built in shade like on some lenses, I do recommend one as the front element is pretty flat. Standard 49mm thread. Also, the dot next to the 4.5 is the 5.6 setting.
Related Links
- Bojidar Dimitriov’s K-mount Page can explain the difference between different Pentax K mounts
