Are Vivitar lenses any good?

[Axel]

I have a Nikon N50 and am looking for additional lenses for it. I see that Vivitar lenses are rather cheap. Are they any good?

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Like so many things, you get what you pay for.
If things are cheap then manufacturers have saved money somewhere.
Vivitar have been around a long time and have always produced good amateur lenses. If you start pushing them to their limits, however, you will start finding why they are cheap - but you might never put yourself in that position, so the situation might not arise.
My personal motto has always been 'buy the best you can afford and if you can't afford the best don't buy anything'. But that's just me. I found that as a pro I managed with four lenses - and two of those I rarely used. So I always ask people - why do you need another lens?
But as in everything the choice is yours. ;-)

 

[Axel]

Like so many things, you get what you pay for.
If things are cheap then manufacturers have saved money somewhere.
Vivitar have been around a long time and have always produced good amateur lenses. If you start pushing them to their limits, however, you will start finding why they are cheap - but you might never put yourself in that position, so the situation might not arise.
My personal motto has always been 'buy the best you can afford and if you can't afford the best don't buy anything'. But that's just me. I found that as a pro I managed with four lenses - and two of those I rarely used. So I always ask people - why do you need another lens?
But as in everything the choice is yours. ;-)

The reason I want another lens is that I "only" have a Sigma 35-70 and would like to have more options (both distance and wide angle).

However, i agree with your motto!

 

[Big Mike]

I have a Vivitar 100-300 that I bought used. It's not great but it's not a total piece of crap either. The focus is slow & noisy & it's not all that sharp at 300mm but it wasn't very expensive.

 

[ksmattfish]

When I worked selling cameras there was a Vivitar 19-35mm zoom lens with EOS mount sitting on the shelf forever. It was significantly cheaper than most other big name extreme wide angle zoom lenses. A lot of people looked at it, but the fact that it was so cheap compared to other similar lenses put people off. Hey, I understand, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

But one day, tired of staring at it, I went out into the parking lot and shot a test roll using the lens. The quality of the pics at 8x10 looked comparable to most other zooms, so I put some up to show to customers, and we started selling that lens as fast as we'd stock them. It was more than good enough for how most folks were going to use it.

I'd say see if you can find a lens review (or a few) that you trust or actual examples. There are definately notoriously crappy lenses out there, including some with the big names on them.

 

[Gene Gustafson]

Any lens is only as good as the tripod you put it on.

 

[ann]

good heavens, a thread from 2004 appears.

 

[Garbz]

A thread revived not only late but also with a completely useless fact which adds nothing to the discussion and doesn't help the original poster at all. *faceplant*