I love ebay...

[Blukoo]

I just bought myself a 135mm f/2.8 for a grand total of £17.50.

It's the Pentacon, however i'm not sure if it's the 6 or 15 blade model. Either way i'm sure it'll deliver £20's worth of pictures each time I use it

[2slo]

That's a result! Post some images taken with it in due course?

[...Mole...]

eBay is a source of much financial woe for me as I'm a very bad impulse spender for things I don't really need but
manage to convince myself that I realllly do.

Seem to be winning an auction for a Drum Scanner.... that's going to be a hard one to explain.

[Blukoo]

2slo said:

That's a result! Post some images taken with it in due course?

I will do. It should be here either wed or thursday

...Mole... said:

I'm a very bad impulse spender for things I don't really need but manage to convince myself that I realllly do.

Just like me then - haha. What is a drum scanner?

[...Mole...]

Blukoo said:

Just like me then - haha. What is a drum scanner?

A high resolution scanner that is especially good for scanning Film, I need a scanner for getting started with my
5x4 camera but this may be a bit OTT as they are a pain in the ass to operate. Great results and some pretty huge files though.

[LongQ]

...Mole... said:

A high resolution scanner that is especially good for scanning Film, I need a scanner for getting started with my
5x4 camera but this may be a bit OTT as they are a pain in the ass to operate. Great results and some pretty huge files though.

Should be interesting.

FWIW I had a 6x6 negative scanned by pros on some pro kit (after an extensive discussion with the guy doing the scanning) and the results were .... hardly any different, for that image, to what I had been able to get from my Epson flatbed scanner. (Except for the size of the file.)

Cost me quite few quid too. In theory the guy wanting the image was to pay but suddenly everything went quiet from his end. Never mind, it was an interesting learning curve. Once you get to resolving the grain of the film there's really not much more one can squeeze out of it.

[Blukoo]

Here's a quick picture I took earlier to show the DOF and bokeh.


IMG_0091 by Murray 1986, on Flickr

[RobDickinson]

For £20 thats a fair result!

[LongQ]

Leaf shutter?

Or just a lot of blades?



Nice outcome.

[2slo]

I'd be happy with that.

[RobbieKB]

Ahh the 'bokeh monster', nice one Blukoo. I've got one at the moment but I bought the wrong adapter. Do you use Canon per chance?

[Blukoo]

I do yeah. The 7D. Although i'm afraid I can't help you with what adapter you need because my one came with the lens and there are no markings on it.
I could get some pictures of it thought if you think that would help?

[LongQ]

Blukoo said:

I do yeah. The 7D. Although i'm afraid I can't help you with what adapter you need because my one came with the lens and there are no markings on it.
I could get some pictures of it thought if you think that would help?

You got the lens AND an adapter for £20?

Complete bargain.

[Killwilly]

I don't think there is a bad 135mm M42 lens. I have a Helios 135 f2.8 which I bought off another forum for £19 including postage and it's probably my sharpest lens, including my AF lenses.

My best MF lens purchase is a Carl Zeiss 50mm f2.8, which cost me £7 from a charity shop whilst on holiday in Scotland. I recently bought a Vivitar (Komine) 28mm f2.8, again from a charity shop for £2.50, but sadly at the moment it doesn't focus to infinity.

[Blukoo]

LongQ said:

You got the lens AND an adapter for £20?

Complete bargain.

£14.50 and £3 for postage It was a complete bargain
It even gives me the focus comfirmation bleep so I don't have to rely fully on my eyes. I don't think it's 100% accurate 100% of the time though.

[2slo]

Blukoo said:

I don't think it's 100% accurate 100% of the time though.

You can pay a hell of a lot more for some lenses and still find that to be the case.

[RobbieKB]

Blukoo said:

I do yeah. The 7D. Although i'm afraid I can't help you with what adapter you need because my one came with the lens and there are no markings on it.
I could get some pictures of it thought if you think that would help?

Wow yeah, with adapter that's a ridiculous deal. The lens is going up in price from what I've seen as they get rarer and rarer and lenses with as many blades are becoming increasingly less common.

I'm not sure it would help, but thank you. I was told M42 adapter but that doesn't look even remotely correct. I need to do some research, I've been gagging to get out and give it a go.

[Blukoo]

Well here are a couple of pics of my adaptor. You're right, it probably won't help too much, but you never know

[LongQ]

2slo said:

Blukoo said:

I don't think it's 100% accurate 100% of the time though.

You can pay a hell of a lot more for some lenses and still find that to be the case.

I have an FD to EOS adaptor with a chip. Id does try to give focus confirmation but will hav accuracy limits. In theory I should have programmed it to suit the lens at various settings but I read the instructions and really did not gwet the gist of them. Then I found that t seems to be reasonabley accurate anyway, at least for my purposes with (usually) moving subjects.

My newest adapter, no extra lens in the path, also slightly missed the Focus to nfinity target with the 600mm lens. It's to do with the distance from the sensor plane and a mm or two wrong is not good news. You can, apparently, easily mod my lens to allow the focus mechanism to move a tad further and solve the problem. Or the guy who designed the adapter created another one, 2mm thinner, that works anyway.

But that's FD to EOS due the design of both mounts. M42 mounts don't have the design issues AFAIK so a more straightforward and I would expect an adapter to be able to cope with full focus ranges. I may be wrong though, I've never tried one.

[CommanderJameson]

Inspired by this thread:

Hoya 135mm f/2.8 HMC lens and adaptor ring, £23.98.