The old lens thread

[theboyfold]

So I've been suddenly sidetracked into the world of old M42 and Contax mount lenses over the last couple of weeks. My first one turned up the other day, so I thought I'd start a thread to see if there is any interest in the topic.

Does anybody here use any old lenses at all?

The two photos (excuse the subject matter, I'm moving house and have nothing to snap at the moment!!) were taken using a M42 ASAHI Super-Takumar 55/2. It's a manual focus lens, so it's also quite a nice way to force myself to be a little more hands on with the camera.

I'm also awaiting a Contax mount to dig out my old Yashica lenses and a Asahi Super-Takumar 50mm f1.4

All this for under £100

[RobDickinson]

Bokeh ont he 2nd one looks great, nice and sharp looking too.

What camera & how are you mounting them?

I thought with canon you need an optical element in the addaptor for most (or lose infinity focus) & that tends to cripple the image.

[Super Slo Mo]

I bought an old 85mm AIS lens the other week. It's great, but I remember why I moved to autofocus, my eyesight isn't so good , which makes focusing a little difficult.

Nevertheless, with a bit of patience and the focus assist light, I've managed to get some reasonable shots.

I've a bunch of old M42 stuff upstairs gathering dust. I might have to drag them out and get an adaptor. I never remembered them being particularly sharp though, but that might have been down to me being less than skilled.

ETA: Seems it's the Nikons that don't allow these M42 lenses to reach infinity without an additional lens, which supposedly degrades image quality.

Edited by Super Slo Mo on Thursday 13th May 09:58

[RobDickinson]

Trouble is with the standard focu screens you have about f4 DOF to see, without AF or focus confirm, or a new focus screen , manual focus of fast lenses is impossible, without live view and thats often too slow.

[theboyfold]

RobDickinson said:

Bokeh ont he 2nd one looks great, nice and sharp looking too.

What camera & how are you mounting them?

I thought with canon you need an optical element in the addaptor for most (or lose infinity focus) & that tends to cripple the image.

I'm using a Canon 5d and I'm using one of these to mount the M42 lenses. It has AF confirm which is really really handy.

I've waiting for this to turn up for the Yashica lenses. However I couldn't find one of those with AF confirm from the UK.

This is a handy page to tell you which lenses you can and can't use on the 5d, I don't have details for any other cameras, but these are good resources: http://forum.manualfocus.org/ and http://www.mflenses.com/

[rasputin]

I did the same a few months ago. I don't mind manual focus too much, but manual aperture was too much of a PITA.

So I bought an old Zenit EM with a lovely split-screen focus screen and auto aperture... That's the best way to enjoy these lenses!

If you see a Carl Zeiss 135mm f/3.5 going for a reasonable price (under £50ish) you should try it. It's sharper wide open than any other lens I have at any aperture, and feels so nice to handle.

Also if you'd like a cheap "extreme macro" setup, I use the CZ 135mm with a Helios 58mm f/2 (pennies on eBay) reversed and taped onto the end of the CZ. Leave the helios aperture wide open, and stop down the CZ as normal. This will give you around 3:1 magnification IIRC. Quality of these lenses is good enough that you can add a 2x teleconverter (again pennies on eBay) for 6:1 magnification and still have decent shots.
This shot was at 12:1 with this setup and two 2x teleconverters, with the CZ at f/11:

The paper it was standing on looked smooth to me

[theboyfold]

^^^ Sounds like a lot of stuff taped together there! Nice results though.

My adapter to my Yashica / Contax mount lenses arrived today, so a few more results down below:

Yashica 50mm f1.9




and to compare a Canon f1.8 MK1


Oddly I prefer the look of the Yashica to be honest, but I think I was a little unstable with the Canon and shooting under artificial light, it will be interesting to get them into sunlight to see how they all perform. The issues with the Yashica is that the mount doesn't have AF confirm and the sensor seems to read 1 stop hot.

Yashica 28mm f2.8


and to compare (a little unfair I think) a Canon 20-70mm F2.8L which I love


Would love to see some other results if you have old stuff up in the loft. For a small outlay I've got loads more toys to play with!

[theboyfold]

Finally have had a chance to play with my 'new' Asahi Super-Takumar 50mm f1.4 and I have to say it's the first let down on my little adventure. The glass butts up against the body when you focus any further out than about 0.55m and shooting at 1.4 it pretty much a pointless exercise at that sort of distance.

So although the bokeh is really nice, I might stick this one back on eBay and put it down as a lesson...

Apologies for the subject matter, but as I've just moved house I don't have much in the way of nice stuff to snap or time to take anything fun

[LongQ]

Ah, had not seen this thread.

Risking a slaped wrist here as I posted this on the 'Roandom' thread earlier but it probably fits better here.

I'll re-quote what I wrote there.

"The shot was taken with a 400D using an old Canon 70-200 f4 FD fit manual lens via a Kood adapter and a 2x extender. With that lot I guess wide open is about f11 so the viewfinder is dark making focussing interesting. No idea what the zoom was set to but the range would be 140-400 with the 2x extender plus about 15% for the adapter plus the 1.6 sensor 'multiplier'. So somewhere between about 250 and 730mm at 'full frame' equivalent."



I'll try to dig up some test shots I took with a canon FD fit 50mm f1.4.

[Killwilly]

LongQ said:

Ah, had not seen this thread.

Risking a slaped wrist here as I posted this on the 'Roandom' thread earlier but it probably fits better here.

I'll re-quote what I wrote there.

"The shot was taken with a 400D using an old Canon 70-200 f4 FD fit manual lens via a Kood adapter and a 2x extender. With that lot I guess wide open is about f11 so the viewfinder is dark making focussing interesting. No idea what the zoom was set to but the range would be 140-400 with the 2x extender plus about 15% for the adapter plus the 1.6 sensor 'multiplier'. So somewhere between about 250 and 730mm at 'full frame' equivalent."



I'll try to dig up some test shots I took with a canon FD fit 50mm f1.4.

This is interesting. Does the Kood adapter have internal optics for focusing to infinity?

[LongQ]

Killwilly said:

This is interesting. Does the Kood adapter have internal optics for focusing to infinity?

Yes. It is removable though.

The adapter came with a 600mm Canon lens which the previous owner had been using for birding shots. To that end he removed the additional glass since his subject mostly needed to be less than 40ft away to reasonably fill the frame. In 600mm terms that is close focus - the min focus distance is about 21ft.

Whether a lens works at all with the correcting lens removed from the adapter is another matter. Some do, over a limited range. Others seem not to work at all.

In general, with the corrective glass in place, longer lenses seem to work pretty well and shorter ones, especially going to semi-wide (28mm) do not seem so flexible. They tend to 'work', in terms of giving reasonable images, only at certain settings. Of course that could be simply a factor of a particular lens design. A 28mm with added 15% 'enlargement' for the adapter and then the 1.6x crop multiplier is a long way from its original design criteria so any anomalies will likely be exaggerated.

I have tried some of my lenses with and without the corrective glass in the adapter and at distances where they both work there seemed to be not so much difference in the results. Indeed almost none at normal veiwing. I guess if one was to enlarge the differences might become more evident. My 600mm seems to produce a fair amount of purple fringing under certain light conditions (but none at all in others) and the adapter might be involved with that. However at the working distances I usually need the extra glass is required so I can't check if the effect is normal or due to the adapter.

I rather like the look produced by the old optics. Both this lens and a Vivitar Series 1 70-210 that I also own seem to produce quite smooth results - sort of film like but without the grain - when the exposure is good. The 400D is a bit old hat in terms of noise so turning up the ISO to offset the f-stop limitation is not really an option. I can deaal with ISO 800 but 400 or less will provide the basis for much better results. However on a 7D things might get quite interesting ....