2026-11-06 Sony TV 12.5-100 f/1.8 Lens

This Sony TV 12.5–100mm f/1.8 lens turned up at a thrift store, priced at $7.99. Since I had picked up a point-and-shoot an aisle over for $5.99 it seemed a fair price. Other than a fair price one has to wonder what I was thinking.

For starters this is obviously a “TV” lens as in meant for a television based camera. Other than the focus and handle powered zoom rings there is no aperture control. Sure there is a cable and a bulge close to the camera mount that no doubt houses electrically powered gizmos that should control the aperture—but how would I get that to work?
Speaking of working, this lens doesn’t even allow light through.

I guess I was hoping I could cross one of my multiple broken point-and-shoot digital cameras—if I was really lucky, one of the cameras with a lens problem—to this 8x zoom and get some sort of wonder camera. The problem with the lack of an aperture control (and light getting through) has buried that idea.

The MACRO range started to work. Initially there was a definite stop at the “W” but it turned out the ring just had to be pushed through a detent.

The screw mount is similar to 16mm film camera mounts. The chromed threads are mounted to a black ring that has Allen keys mounting it to a ring channel on the back of the lens mount. There are videos on the internet of opening up the bulge that start with removing the black screws. Once the ring held by the black screws is removed there is a metal plate held by more screws that can be lifted off to expose the innards of the bulge. The innards include a very intricate aperture and a stepper motor with some gearing. You could just remove the aperture and stepper motor stuff and have a lens that light can get from one end to the other!

And a lovely lens it is too. Rumoured to be made by Tamron but maybe made by Tokina, it doesn’t cover much more of an area than Super16mm film, if even that. People who have mounted lens like it to larger APS size imagers end up with 2 Meg small round images.

There is a brass slotted adjustment on one side of the bulge. I think I saw that adjustment on the aperture assembly inside the bulge. I suspect it has something to do with setting the aperture to the camera control unit so the lens can be internally “capped” or shut down completely. I tried turning the slotted control without any visible change to the closed aperture.
So that is where this story ends…

In case it is relevant—

A CS mount's flange back distance is 12.52mm.
A C mount's flange back distance is 17.526mm.
Thus a C-to-CS mount adapter has the thickness of 5.006mm

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