2026-11-14 Vivitar 17mm f/3.5 Lens

One of the best parts of being an cheap collector—I collect anything photographic that seems to be a good value at the time—is the ability to collect something you would never have owned if it cost real money. In this case I snapped up a Vivitar 17mm f/3.5 wide-angle lens. The reason it was cheap was because it was in Minolta mount. Some cameras just don’t have “cache”, which in the case of Minolta is completely ridiculous (in my opinion).

Anyway, back to this lens. According to the internet this lens, while being labelled a Vivitar lens, is actually a rebranded Tokina RMC/SL lens

It has—

11 elements in 9 groups
a six blade iris with stops at 3.5, 5.6, 8, 11, 16
a field of view of 103º 40’
a closest focus distance of 0.25 m

Physically it has an overall length of 49.2mm, a maximum diameter of 70mm and a filter diameter of 67mm. Being so wide angle, lens hoods are a problem with you having to come up with some arrangement of step-up rings and normal lens hoods to simultaneously shield the lens from flare sources while not catching the hood in the shot.

It is a solid lens weighing 310 g in Pk mount. In Minolta mount it weighs 5 g more.

Many years in the past I worked as a Commercial Photographer for a television station. I was asked to buy a wide-angle lens for the television station’s camera. In my ignorance and arrogance I decided on a 35mm because —in my reading to that time—it had “less distortion” compared to anything wider. In that case it was an absolutely stupid choice as the lens was needed to show the inside of a remarkably small camper. As I remember it, the wide-angle shot I could make with the 35mm just captured a table.

Later I saw what a 28mm lens would capture. It would have been a much better choice for the trailer interiors, but nothing compared to what was coming down the optical path. Many years later I was exposed to the view of a 24mm lens. It made our remarkably small living room look like a basketball court. Then when I was in school one of the students got a 20mm lens. He took every class member’s photo from inches from their noses so we could all enjoy our similarities to a camel!
Compared to a 28mm lens—a 20mm lens is 25% wider and a 17mm lens is 38% wider (diagonal field of view). It is sharp and has relatively little distortion (slight barrel distortion). The extreme corners have a bit of vignetting, but it is far from distracting. This is all relative to being used on a full frame camera. These days many 4/3rds digital cameras come with 18-55mm zoom lenses that at their widest would give this lens a real battle.

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