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Vintage Tomioka Tominon 114mm F/4.5 Polaroid ID-3 Camera Lens Bokeh Test and Review



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The Vintage Tomioka Tominon 114mm F/4.5 Polaroid ID-3 Camera Lens is the second vintage Polaroid camera lens that we are going to test and review for bokeh qualities such as bubble and swirly bokeh, as well as sharpness, black-and-white photography, flare, and in general, the specific character that it gives to photos. We took this lens off of a Polaroid Land Identification System ID-3 camera that was used back in the prime days of Polaroids in the late 1960s and 70s to take photos for passports and government-issued IDs. This is what the camera looked like before being taken apart for its lens.



If you carefully inspect the photos of the lens, you will see that in front of the lens, it reads "Japan", but behind the lens, it reads "Made in Germany". This is because back in the day, glass elements were produced in Japan, and then Germany would produce the shutter and mechanical parts, and finally, other parts were made in the U.S., where the final assembly was done. As I mentioned earlier, this is the second lens that we have taken out of a Polaroid camera, but it is also the second lens that actually has aperture blades you can close. However, if you've followed our previous posts you know that our fundamental precondition for any photo or video is that we take them with aperture wide open to maximize the character that lenses give us with all their flaws and character. We mounted this lens on our Nikon Z7 mirrorless camera as it was set on "vivid colors".



Color Shots and Bokeh

We took some shots with our Tomioka Tominon 114mm f/4.5 lens to see what its bokeh looks like in particular. As you can see below, the bokeh is soft and bubbly but just slightly swirly, while it can be a little busy depending on the distance between the subject and the background. The bokeh bubbles slightly change form towards the edges of the frame. So far, this is relatively ordinary for such lenses, but the specific character that we recorded from this lens was the spectacular color transformation of the background. If you see the 4th to 9th photos at the end of the color shots, you will see a juxtaposition of colors in the background that adds character. A spectrum of orange, blue, and purple is formed in the bokeh that makes the background more interesting than it actually is.


Black-and-White Photography

The black-and-white photos needed some added contrast, but I wish we had taken more B&W shots to see what effect the color transformation and juxtaposition would create in greyscale. Anyway, black-and-white photos are sharp in the middle, and the bokeh is dreamy and creates the atmosphere of an illusion.


Flare Effect

You can see the photos below to have an idea how flare looks like through this lens. Nothing particularly interesting, until you see the purple light dispersion in the second shot. It can be because of the effect of the coating, but it came out of nowhere in a specific angle. If it is interesting to you, please let us have your comments and/or email, so that we spend some time trying to discover the extension of this effect. As you know, we've been trying to keep our posts shorter than before, so that readers find what they are looking for easily through the text, and on the other hand, keep readers' attention in this era of short-term attentions caused by social media.


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