Vivitar Series 1 Minolta MD zoom 70 210 mm f1:3.5 macro

So was this lens any good. I have two Vivitar Series 1 lenses. One is really
nice the other sucks. Anyone know anything about this one.

 

So was this lens any good. I have two Vivitar Series 1 lenses. One is really

Are you aware that Vivitar doesn't make anything? They're a
marketing company.

 

Whatever. The point is `20 YEARS AGO I bought a Vivitar Series 1 70-210 mm
Minolta Brand Zoom lens for my XG-7 and it's a fantastic lens. More recently
I bought another series 1 lens on Ebay and it's garbage. It's a 28-100 mm
variable f and at Max f it's virtually unusable. You can't get it focused.
There is another Series 1 zoom available on Ebay and I was wondering if
anyone had any experience with it. The one I bought 20 years ago I had the
luxury of either Popular or Modern photography giving it an excellent
review. Popular photography has reviews of lenses but not of old ones from
years ago. I guess they never heard of buying and selling things used like
on Ebay.

 

Vivitar gets its product from varying manufacturers and as a result quality
will vary broadly from one year to the next. The earliest Series One lenses
reportedly are the best, and further later made stuff seems to suffer poor
reviews. Current supplier seems to be Samyang which also makes their own
Phoenix line. I have two lenses by this firm. They are not pro product by
any means, but the two I have fortunately suit my purposes. You might
consider Tokina as a better third party alternative. Or try find the vintage
of any Vivitar you are interested in, and thereby ensure getting as old a
one as possible.

 

I recently bought a Vivitar Series 1 19-35 wide-angle
zoom on EBay just because it was dirt cheap. I didn't
really expect much of it, instead, it turned out to be
pretty nice. Not pro-quality, of course, but something
you would definitely use for snapshots. Someone told
me it's actually made by Cosina (and not by Shamyang)
and that makes sense since the lens is made in Japan and
not China.