What are the worst lenses you have had.

As a counterpoint to this thread. What are the lenses that you just did not like for one reason or another.

The lens I really hated, was optically very good and I made some of my favourite shots with this lens. I slowly came to hate the Olympus 7-14 2.8, for its weight and bulk. I was doing a lot of photography, in the nearby Apennines, and I was using the M43 system. I started out with an Olympus EM5, Panasonic 12-35 2.8,35-100 2.8 and the Olympus 9-18 ( which I really liked for its colour saturation).

Gear lust got the better of me and the 9-18 was swapped for the 7-14, which due to its weight slowly got left at home more and more. The Panasonic 7-14 had a weird purple blooming problem with Olympus cameras at the time, but would have been a better choice.

The only other lenses I have disliked have been a cheap junk screw thread Soligor ( I seem to remember) adapted to M43 400 manual focus lens bought for a few Euros, optically so bad to be unusable. The other being another an old, to cheep to pass on, Sigma F mount fisheye, which was great if you like Lomography type lens defects

My worst ever lens was Industar-69. Pround product of Soviet Union, a half frame lens, 28mm f/2.8 normal lens, Tessaresque 4 elements in three groups. M39-mount lens which needs adjusting or dremeling for infinity focus, which may lead to a lens that will be accidently unscrewed when close focusing. Somewhat unsuitable for digital photography due to wide and massive purple colour cast at the edge, but it being an absolutely tiny lens it spent lots of time on my APS-C Sony NEX-7. And being tiny meant that while focusing was fine, changing the aperture was highly challenging at best, practically impossible with any kind of gloves. Perfectly fine sharpness when stopped down enough, highly creative one when not - for any semi-serious use this lens indeed was an "f/8 and stay there" lens. Also 5 blade aperture and something I'd almost like to call "reflective coatings" . But it was tiny, just like NEX-7, so in a way it was a joy to use.

I can't say that I disliked the lens - the end results however were often a different story.

Hi,

Way back. With a Nikon F2. 43-86mm zoom. Ugh!

Stan

sony 24 70 kit lens, it was so soft ,no wonder it only cost me $180 used , i sold it the next day for the same price.

Nikkor 28-105 zoom.

Not sharp anywhere at any FL.

Rich

Pentax 16-50 SMD f2.8
After the first copy died because of the Sudden Death Motor, I have it replaced with second copy with warrenty and that one also died within a year of its replacement.
The lens barrel is extremely loose when fully extended and was very soft for a lens deemed as a star lens.

That would have to be my 50 f/2.9 Meyer Trioplan in Exakta mount. Ivor Matanle in his book "Collecting and Using Classic SLRs" gives it one star - he must have had a better copy than mine. However, it does perform quite well reversed or stacked on a decent telephoto.

Here are three examples of lenses that leave me totally indifferent.

Zoom lenses by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

Sony 18-70mm f/3.5-5.6 Macro
Olympus Digital 40-150mm f/3.5-4.5
Canon EF 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6 USM

Inexpensive zoom with floating aperture. 👎🏾
They arrived at my place, when I bought some second-hand cameras I was interested in.
I don't think I've ever used these three lenses.

I should at least do a test run just to see the results.

The 50/1.8 that came with my AE-1. Pretty useless by itself. The first thing I did was add to it and, when I had the opportunity, switch the the EF24-85 when I got an EOS film camera.

Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 in Canon EF mount. Especially disappointed as everything I read was a glowing recommendation, because it was sharp. Well it was, if it actually focused. Which it only managed, on very rare occasions. The majority of the time, it was just plain terrible. Couldn't AF on a barn door.
I can't remember what happened to it, but like a fool, I bought another one second hand, to try on my EOSM with adapter. Another bad mistake. I wasn't too bad when it worked, but had a very bad habit of freezing the camera up far too often, requiring battery removal to reset the camera.
Since then, I 've never bought another Tamron lens, or Canon camera.

Is front focusing the fault of the lens or the camera?

You're right, the Olympus here is much better quality than the Canon 55-200, which is surprisingly light.
But personally, I hate these sliding-open Zoom models, but I should make an effort and take the time to evaluate them.
The only zoom lens I use regularly in the studio is my Nikkor AF-S VR 24-120mm f/4 G ED N

The worst build I think was the Canon 50/1.4 USM I bought new in 2003. I was crouching under a tree, on top of soil, and took the lens off to put on a telephoto, and put it in my lap, and forgot it was there when I stood up, and the lens fell onto grassy soil, less than 1 meter, and it burst into several pieces.

My Sigma 15-30 from around the same time period fell onto concrete while I was running to cross a street after I had just swapped it out, from about 1.4 meters, and it rolled and bounced a few time on the pavement, and only has scratches to show for it.

When I first got a D200 DSLR I got an 18-200. I wouldn't say it's a bad lens but it wasn't great. I didn't recognize that at first because it was my only lens. Later I got a D3 and a 24-70 and 70-200. They were nice lenses but I missed the reach of the 200 on the DX body so I lusted after a 400mm or more. Eventually spotted a used Sigma 50-500 (Bigma) and bought it. It wasn't really all that great. Heavy and a bit soft over 450mm and slow to focus. But it was my longest lens. About 5-6 years later I got a Nikon 200-500 and it was the cat's knees or the bee's pajamas. A really nice lens.

So the Bigma was probably my worst lens. Usable, but the least of my lens pile.

In terms of Veiling Flare, an 18-55mm Nikon kit-lens was really bad on my D50 and, equally so, a Panasonic 14-42mm on my DMC-G1.