Porst 55mm F1.2

Anyone know anything about these lenses (a web search pulled back a few images but not much else)?

It just bought one via Ebay (it wasn't expensive) as I thought it might be a fun portrait lens but I'd be interested to hear from anyone that has used one.

Porst is/was a Germand retailer which sold a lot of products under there own name. I don't know where they were produced.
Is was allmost allways low budget stuff.

The lens has arrived and for what I paid I'm initially quite satisfied with it. The build quality isn't the best and the focus is a little notchy, but the colour rendition seems good and that F1.2 maximum aperture makes manual focusing very easy.

Just done some quick tests (centre sharpness only) of the Porst versus both my Vivitar 55mm F2.8 macro and also an SMC-FA 50mm F1.7

Wide open the lens is better than I expected, although because of the limited depth of field you need to be very careful when focussing on the target. At F2.8 it's noticeably sharper than the Vivitar - at all other apertures the two are very close indeed with the Vivitar perhaps just edging it from F8 and smaller.

Against the FA50mm F1.7 the first thing I noticed was that I'd done a better job focussing the other lenses than the AF did! Once I'd re-shot the test using manual focus then the Pentax lens was noticeably better wide open and edged all the other tests, but not by very much once at F5.6 and below.

I owned one of the Porst 55/1.2 lenses and I was quite pleased with it. But one thing bugged me; When using it on my MZ-5, I couldn´t get the focusing indicator led to light up when foucusing. Not really a problem, but it felt like the lens was too soft wide open for the camera to register the focus.
Yes, I´m just my guessing here, but when switching to an SMC 50/1.2 later on, the focus indication worked just fine with it.

The Porst 55/1.2 was made by Fuji, according to my camera rapair man. He´s been in the trade for about 40 years, so I guess I´ll just have to take his word for it.

// Mats

I'm sure I'd seen something online saying that it was made by Tamioka, which would make sense as they also sold their own F1.2 lens, however I've no idea if that's true or not.

I finally got round to putting some test shots online - all taken at F1.2 using the K10D handheld at 100ISO:







100% crop from previous






100% crop from previous






Sharpness isn't too bad wide open, colour and contrast seem pretty good although there is a touch of CA. I really like the out of focus rendition and the ability of the lens to really limit DOF - at F1.2 and closest focus it does take a bit of concentration to ensure focus is correct though as the in-focus area is very slim indeed.

Well worth looking out for IMHO, if you can get hold of one cheap.

Your repair man isn't totally wrong but he is not right either. Porst marketed a seies of cameras and lenses which were rebadged Fuji's. These were indeed made by Fuji and the the 50/1.2 is identical to the Fuji version which is on a par with the Pentax 50/1.2. Fuji didn't make any Pentax fit ones. Porst (like Honeywell in the US somewhat earlier and indeed Tower) rebadged equipment from different makers and fittings under their own brand. It mat well be the tamoika. They certainly produced a 50/1.2 in M42 fit (about the only one there was) and could well have put a K mount on this.

Kim