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It has a loyal fan base none the less. None of my dozens of other reviews has received nearly as much criticism.

 

It seems that some people like that soap bubble bokeh but I think it is totally ridiculous to pay $500 for a Trioplan when other lenses show a similar behavior for much less. Any classic 1.4/50 will give you plenty of "character" and nervous bokeh wide open for 50 bucks.

 

Some things go viral for unknown reasons, and maybe for a high degree of randomness. For what concerns my interest, it has become very popular in some italian photography forums, where it has been referred as one of the tools by Sandra Bartocha (actually, the Flickr gallery I've linked above is part of her work). Sandra won some prizes at Veolia with photos taken with the Trioplan (some are in that Flickr gallery) and this boosted the popularity of the lens. AFAIK the price quickly went up after this moment of popularity, so it happened that you read a few earlier, positive review of the lens when it costed less than 200€, and by the time you decided you *had* to buy it the price was more than doubled. It also came with a special boost of interest for legacy lenses given by the mirrorless ad campaigns, and I suppose quite a few people bought it as their first legacy lens - without a lot of knowledge of the other possibilities. Actually, I've started reading blogs such as yours or others that deal with legacy lenses just after I found that I was happy with the experience of my first legacy lens.

 

Of course not but does that matter? It's the "character" which matters. Not the subject or FOV.

 

 

 

Well, it does matter because most of the photos taken with this lens are of flowers. This might be also another form of imitation of Sandra's work, but that's life. And 100mm vs 50mm make also for a more convenient working distance. I've started doing some experiment with similar photos using a 50mm and in practice I find it's much easier to work with 100mm.