Minolta MD-Rokkor X 45mm f/2

23 Nov, 2011MC Primes, Minolta, NEX 3, Short Telephoto
Minolta MD-Rokkor X 45mm f/2

The Minolta MD 45mm f/2 is a common slightly wide and fairly compact standard lens.

The lens is from the time when they started making less expensive kit lenses. It is well made by today’s standards, but not as nice as some of the older manual lenses, like the cheap feeling plastic aperture ring (most of the lens is still metal though).

The lens has 6 elements in 5 groups, and has only a 5 bladed diaphragm. The minimum focus distance is a long 0.6 m (2.1 ft), but the lens is fairly light for this vintage lens weighing 125 g (4.4 oz).

Optical Characteristics

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Comments on the Results

The center resolution is pretty good wide open, better by f/2.8, but shows a huge step up at f/4. The corners are good/very good by f/5.6.

Lateral CA isn’t well controlled for a prime like this lens, showing about 2 pixels across the range. This will be visible in some circumstances or zoomed in.

Coma and astigmatism aren’t bad, but there is some deformation of the bokeh circles in the corner wide open.

I didn’t specifically test this lens for flare, longitudinal CA, or take sample shots.

Pros and Cons

  • Compact Size
  • Lightweight
  • Extreme Corners
  • About 1 f/stop behind

Bottom Line

This lens is compact, but I don’t really consider it a pancake. It is only about 2 mm shorter than the much better performing Olympus OM 50mm f/1.8 or other similarly good 50mm f/1.8 lenses. Build quality for the age isn’t great and it has only a 5 bladed aperture. On the plus side, most of the frame is pretty good performance, only the far corners suffer. It is a fine lens, but performs about 1 f/stop behind the better lenses. The bottom line is that this was an inexpensive kit lens from the day, and it shows.

Gallery

The gallery images are © 2011 Eric Tastad, and may only be used for personal evaluation of the lenses.

1 Comment

  1. Minolta SLR film cameras: SR-T202 and XE-7 : Daniel J. Schneider says:
    March 11, 2015 at 5:00 pm

    […] f/2.0 pancakes (very short lenses). The focal length is great for a normal lens, and they honestly have pretty good glass. They’re not very valuable because there are millions of them out there, but for a […]