Sears lenses?

Somewhere recently I saw a shot done with a Sears 135 macro and it looked pretty good, so I started looking up Sears lenses our of curiosity. Most of the ones listed on ebay are for K-mount but there are others too and it seems many of the sellers have no idea what camera they are for as it isn't listed and they aren't responding to my questions.
Anybody here used one? They're really cheap but I have reservations about the quality.
Might be fun though.

I would not purchase a sears lens unless the seller know what camera mount was on it. If I remember the lenses where not the real cheap ones.

I wouldn't buy one that they didn't know either but the 135 for 4.95 is tempting.

The ones I have from my first 35mm work pretty good. The K-mount was for pentax.I still have them all.
Jimmy B

Frog - Sears merely rebranded products from lots of other manufacturers. I forget some of the names, but most of them were big names. Same with "Tower" cameras and products - Sears' brand name on someone else's product. But anyway, as far as the mount, obviously they will differ per each camera brand. The only way to tell as far as I know would be to get a good look at it or, of course, mount it. I know some 3rd party lenses have a code or letter denoting what mount they work on, but I have no idea if Sears did that.

Some of my friends and acquaintances on another site that is dedicated to manual focus lenses have a Sears lens or two that get glowing reports. All I can recommend is to try them. :wink:
-Bruce

Like Brad said, Sears rebranded lenses made by other manufacturers. In some cases you can find identical lenses with different names on them...the other third party mfgrs from the same time period. For example, Vivitar never actually manufactured anything. (vivitar info: http://www.cameraquest.com/VivLensManuf.htm) I suspect some of these same companies made the Sears lenses. Some of them may be very good, but there are probably others that are terrible. IOW, I wouldn't expect all Sears lenses to be of equal quality.

What camera do you want to use them on? If you're using an adapter to mount them on a Canon camera, or if you're just planning to buy a cheap film body to play with, check out the M42 screw mount lenses. There are tons of different lenses that you can get for dirt cheap and some of them are very good.

Paul

I think I'll just wait for a nikon mount 135 f/2.8 and find out what I get.

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Originally Posted by Frog

Somewhere recently I saw a shot done with a Sears 135 macro and it looked pretty good, so I started looking up Sears lenses our of curiosity. Most of the ones listed on ebay are for K-mount but there are others too and it seems many of the sellers have no idea what camera they are for as it isn't listed and they aren't responding to my questions.
Anybody here used one? They're really cheap but I have reservations about the quality.
Might be fun though.

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Hey Frog,

I have a Sears 80-200mm f4 lens. It is a K mount and I use it on my K1000. It is a quality lens. Back in the day, Sears had their name on lots of products that were made by someone else. That practice continues today. Sigma makes lenses for various camera mounts, and Quantaray (the Ritz "name" brand) is made by Sigma.

An example: Sears used to sell a .22 autoloader that was actually a Marlin Model 60, with the Sears brand (Ted Williams) on the barrel instead of Marlin. I'm sure it's the same with the camera lenses.

As far as who made them, I have no idea. And as has already been mentioned, you would need to do more research to find out who made it and what camera(s) they were made for.

Well that 135 f/2.8 macro seems to be pretty good as much as one can tell from a web shot.
They're selling for 20 bucks or less on ebay for Canon, K-mount, Minolta but I haven't seen one for a Nikon yet.
Others may want to check it out.
If the lens isn't so hot, I'm sure I could think of other uses for it.