Konica Minolta AF 100mm f/2.8 Macro

Review Date
January 7, 2010

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
Less than 1 month

Visitors rate this review
5.00 of 5, 1 votes

Reviewed by
vincentsiew , Professional

Price Paid
$650.00 at Singapore (Used)

Photography Experience
6-10 years

Summary
Have been hunting for this lens after hearing much rave review so before. Initially bought it for macro but now finds that it's comparative to my raynox lenses. But the beauty is it's also a portrait. So, it's a 2-in-1 deal that's most handy. No regrets for the premium price paid and the long wait to own this piece of equipment.

Strengths
Sharp from F2.8 to F32 with good color reproduction. No CA. Both for macro and protrait. An excellent piece of equipment.

Weaknesses
Focusing a bit slow, hunting all over. But for macro, and since using manual focus, there's no issue here.

Review Date
January 1, 2006

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Visitors rate this review
3.75 of 5, 4 votes

Reviewed by
willscary , Casual

Price Paid
$260.00 at ebay

Photography Experience
21+ years , People

Summary
I bought this lens several years ago on ebay. The plan was to use it for occational macrophotography, but mainly to use as a portrait lens. WOW! This lens will not disappoint you! It is consistantly razor sharp with beautiful colors rendered in full brilliance. I could talk this lens up, but lets just say that the pictures are perfect from a wide open aperature until stopped down to f/16 (I have never stopped down farther). Its negatives are its size and weight, and its relatively slow AF speed compared to smaller primes like the 50mm f/1.7, but what do you expect? It IS a large lens with large glass elements.

Strengths
Sharpness, color, lack of distortion, my lens seldomly exhibits flare and when it does I blame myself for my technique, focus limiting switch

Weaknesses
kind of large, AF is not blazing fast and can hunt a bit in low light, but I do not consider either of these to detract from the score I give because ot is not meant as a walkaround lens for quick shooting

Similar Products Used
Minolta AF primes, older Pentax manual focus primes, Minolta, Sigma and Tamron zooms

Customer Service
none needed

Review Date
October 25, 2005

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
21+ years

Reviewed by
richachrome , Professional

Price Paid
$570.00 at BH

Summary
I have purchased many macro lenses over the years in the 90mm to 105mm focal length range. These include the sigma 105/2.8, the vivitar/phoenix ( made by cosina ) 100/3.5, and the highly reguarded tamron 90/2.8. In fact I have owned two of some of the above lenses. The minolta 100/2.8 D version is overall the best of the group. In comparison, the surprisingly good vivitar is fully multicoated and has only 5 elements in 4 groups, resulting in amazing contrast and color neutrality. No above lens has higher contrast. Slides will tell otherwise, but in prints you could not tell that this lens isn't optically perfect. Slide film, though, can show the other lenses producing better sharpness and detail. The tamron has resolution nearing perfection at around 5.6 to 11.
The sigma is also a great performer and I especially like the slightly greater focal lenght - it really shows in my slides. But when it comes down to opticall performance at f/2.8 all the way to f/16 ( I have't tested beyond f/16 ), the minolta has the consistently best combination of sharpness, contrast, and color neutrality. It also is very solidly built and has very fast autofocus when my maxxum 9 is set to speed priority autofocus. The minolta also has the smartest division of focus ranges - 0.6 meters to infinity as opposed to the other lenses much less.

Strengths
Everything about it is a strenght.

Weaknesses
No lens case comes with it.

Similar Products Used
Tamron, Sigma, Vivitar, Phoenix.

Customer Service
Never used it.

Review Date
January 30, 2004

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Visitors rate this review
3.00 of 5, 2 votes

Reviewed by
Diec Cho , Casual , from Hong Kong

Price Paid
$0.00 at Shing

Photography Experience
2-5 years , Outdoor

Summary
This medium range of macro lense produces excellent quality image with good contrast and superb sharpness. The out of foucs background looks like melted cheese. Thanks the circular aperture that the bokeh in the images are all pleasing cirles. I owned a Canon EF100mm f/2.8 USM before. The USM one is sharp at macro but become very soft at infinity. The Minolta one I got is the newwest (D) version which totally out perform the one from Canon in term of color, detail and overall focus range (from macro to infinity).

Strengths
Excellent build and optical quanlity. The lense include the lense shade.

Weaknesses
The focus ring is a little bit tight.

Similar Products Used
Canon EF100mm f/2.8 USM

Customer Service
Never for this lense but for changing the focus screen of my Dyanx 7. The service of Minolta Hong Kong is very good and fast response.

Review Date
November 13, 2003

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Reviewed by
Alan Browne , Expert

Price Paid
$549.00 at B&H NYC

Photography Experience
11-20 years , Other

Summary
Finest prime lens produced by Minolta for the Maxxum line. Sharp and contrasty. Crisp. Becasue of the very deep placement of the front elemnt, I do not mount a filter for most use. Fantastic slide images result from this lens. Great for portraits and the subject 'lifts' off of the paper. Very good bokeh. Quick AF in the non-macro range (Maxxum 9), but I usually manual focus.

Strengths
Light weight. Crisp images.

Weaknesses
I expected a more 'solid' feeling lens at this range. The lens is a compromise of high quality materials and some plastics that diminish its overall appeal from a build standpoint.

Similar Products Used
Many. (!)

Customer Service
Only 1 failure of a flash in 10 years, and that repaired free of charge, out of warranty, returned in about 10 days. Excellent.