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Specification

Source of data

• Spiratone photo & video accessory catalog No. 852 (Fall/Winter 1985).

Manufacturer description

From the Spiratone photo & video accessory catalog No. 852 (Fall/Winter 1985):

A fast, affordable, high quality ULTRA WIDEANGLE using economical 58mm accessories, the PLURA_COAT FULLY AUTOMATIC Spiratone 20mm f/2.8 94° ULTRA WIDEANGLE

for NIKON, CANON, MINOLTA, OLYMPUS and PENTAX 'K' bayonet mount (name your camera model)

While the now 'standard' 28mm wideangle, with its 75° coverage, may be all right for some tasks, there are many times when it just won't do. When you need the extra coverage (94° ultra wideangle view), you need the Spiratone 20mm lens. It covers over 6X the field of your normal 50mm, almost 2X as much as a 28mm wideangle. In other words, at any given distance, at which your 50mm covers 100 square feet, the 20mm will cover a staggering 627 square feet. Or, to put it differently, it "compresses" the required working distance by 85% (for those occasions on which you can't move back any further)!

And depth of field becomes tremendous. At its smallest (f/22) opening, everything from 10 inches to infinity is in focus! Even at f/5.6, depth of field extends from 2 1/2' to infinity. And you can focus all the way down to 8" from the subject — with only a 1/4 turn of the focusing ring from infinity.

All this wouldn't be impressive, if this were a 'fish-eye' lens (fish-eye lenses are great for special effects, but not when you want a wide angle view without distortion). The Spiratone 20mm lens is a 'true' wideangle; straight lines in your subject remain straight lines in the picture. Of course, its sharpness, contrast, color fidelity and evenness of illumination are also remarkably good.

The 9 element 7 group lens is compact: just 2" long, 2 1/4" in diameter and it uses economical 58mm accessories. It is simply the greatest value in ultra wideangle lenses ever offered!

From the Popular Photography magazine (January 1988)

... I have found low cost independent lenses that give perfectly acceptable quality, while not quite matching the optical excellence of the camera makers' far more expensive optics. An excellent case in point is the 20mm f/2.8 ultra-wide-angle (94.5-degree) lenses sold by Cambron and Spiratone. These are actually the same lens, with slightly different external styling, and both are remarkably good. Very expensive camera-company equivalents do perform slightly better, particularly at full aperture, but certainly not $300 or $400 better than these just-over-$100 lenses.

Notes

• Independent-brand lenses were made for 35mm film SLR cameras by companies that competed with the camera manufacturers. Some came from factories that made lenses under their own brand names (Angenieux, Kiron, Sigma, Tamron, Tokina). Many others were national and international marketing organizations (Kalimar, Panagor, Rokunar, Soligor, Starblitz) that bought lenses from anonymous manufacturers. One firm — Vivitar — actually designed its own lenses and accessories, which were then subcontracted to manufacturing firms. Still others were private labels, sold only by specific photo specialty shops (Cambron, Quantaray, Spiratone).

Lenses with similar focal length