Minolta Rokkor Vintage Lenses (Original)

We’ve spent 18 months sourcing the best lenses from Minolta’s legendary Rokkor range; researching the best lenses they made and buying multiples of each; filtering out any with defects and issues until we had a set we would be happy to hire out and to use ourselves.

Minolta built these in the 1960’s and 70’s in response to Nikon’s Nikkor range, building with Thorium and Lanthanum which makes them the faster and gives them the warmer colour that you simply cannot achieve with modern lenses. They are wonderfully flattering whilst still very sharp, and still highly sought after by many photographers for use with modern sensors  (58mm is nicknamed The Hawkeye due to it’s wonderful sharpness). We thought these characteristics would transfer nicely to video/film with modern digital sensors, so we started with a handful to test and we were so impressed with the results we expanded the set into a full set of 11 lenses (see below for detailed list).

It’s a fabulous range and we are confident these will make some wonderful projects as an alternative option to the Canon K35 / FD / SSC range, producing a very similar look on modern sensors whilst being more budget (and insurance) friendly as well as lighter and smaller.

As a native MC/MD mount the kit comes with an adapter to go to Sony E-Mount – making them an excellent set of Vintage Primes for Sony cameras such as the FX6 and FX9. They are in their original 1960’s housing so are not suitable for use with motorised lens control, but they are geared for use with a manual follow focus.

Full set:

Minalta Rokkor MC 17mm f4
Minalta Rokkor MC 21mm f2.8
Minalta Rokkor MC 24mm f2.8
Minalta Rokkor MC 28mm f2
Minalta Rokkor MC W HH 35mm f1.8
Minalta Rokkor MD 45mm f2
Minalta Rokkor MD 50mm f1.2
Minalta Rokkor MC 58mm f1.2
Minalta Rokkor MC 85mm f1.7
Minalta Rokkor MC 100mm f2
Minalta Rokkor MD Tele 200mm f2.8