What are your thoughts on vintage lenses?

[del_rio]

60D user here. I just bought myself a Super-Takumar 50 1.4 for $70, and holy lord it's good. For daylight shooting, it's soft at f/1.4 but tack sharp at f/2.4 and miles better than my 18-135 kit lens. The focus ring is smooth as silk and the metal body is built to stand the test of time. It has a manual aperture ring, but it's stepped, so I'll have to disassemble the thing to de-click it.

Anyway, this thread is part question and part PSA to budget filmmakers who haven't realized you don't need to pay $400+ for quality glass. What do you vintage lens owners use/recommend? I'm in the market for a 28 or 35mm myself.

[bart]

Hi I wrote something about the MIR-24h 35mm F2.
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=2732.0

I love this lens.

[del_rio]

Everything I've heard about the Mir-1 and 24 is quite good, though I don't know if I'll end up getting one. Another Soviet lens, the Pentacon 30mm 3.5, is probably the sharpest lenses I've seen in my search, but it's extremely hard to find for under $175.

Also, I just took a few hours today to disassemble my Takumar and remove the aperture ring's ball bearing. Feels awesome to have continuous manual aperture control!

[discocalculi]

I've tried some older Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar, Arsat, Tamron lenses. They have all been good fun, especially the Pentacon 6 lenses with a tilt adapter. The adaptall-2 lenses can also be extremely fun.

Of course nothing comes without drawbacks. The older lenses can sometimes have slow/rusty apertures and other problems.

In case one does not want to go down the used/vintage lenses route, Samyang recently released a couple of so called Vdslr cine lenses, which is the same as their manual lenses but designed to fit focus pull systems. 

Other than that Nikon still produces some great manual focus lenses. The adapter is quite cheep and in case escaping the Canon route, the lenses will still work on ... Nikon...

[bart]

I also have adaptall2 tamron macro lenses: 90mm f2.5 and one 300mm f5.6.
But I can replace both now since I bought a used EF100mm f2.8 which I also use in 600d cropzoom.

The main advantage of old 35, 50, 85mm primes is that the ones faster than f2.8 are relatively cheap. Same goes for a cheap 135mm f2.5-2.8. And they are very solid build and have a nice focus ring dedicated to precise manual focussing. It's also a joy to bring life back into these amazing pieces of engineering. And they have a certain look and image rendering you might like.
But prices have risen a lot last few years. For oldies from f2.8, I think you are better off buying a Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 or something. Old fast primes at and below 28mm are rare and expensive. Modern lenses cover wide angles much better. I like the superwides for timelapses. Also the Samyangs are worth considering at some price point.

Choices also differ from using a crop sensor or not. Full frame cameras have more advantage in creating shallow DOF than crop factor cameras. Especially at wider angles.

[jbuy41]

I have got a collection of Sears/Pentax that I use on my 550D.  135/2.8, 50/1.7, 28/,  35-70/3.5, 50/2.0, 200/4.0, and 28/2.8.
Average price around $10 a piece.
My canon lens just don't hold up.  My sears lens well made (metal and glass), crisp, and easy focus (manually of course) and works great with ML.  Just have to manual focus which  I perfer and use an adapter with chip. 

 

[calypsob]

I have a 24mm pentax-A and it is one of my favorites.  Manual aperture and focus. Cant go wrong.

[ilguercio]

I have a nice Mamiya Sekor 55 1.4 and it's like new really. Works really well.
Also, i've got a 50 1.4 FD which i'm trying to convert to EF but it's taking me a while since i don't have any special tool for the job.I must say some stuff is quite overpriced though. Either you find OK lenses for peanuts or lenses that probably can't give the performances of today's glass and still cost a fortune. I bought my two Samyangs for that reason, no way i was going to pay more for less.

[Roman]

I pretty much never use autofocus, and find the in camera apeture control annoying, so dont mind the fully manual Samyangs. Have got the 8mm, and 35mm is on its way.

I've got a 'Rony' F1.7 55mm pentax lense that takes some nice pics, think it should look pretty good for film too.

Digital zoom with the 600D is a gift from the heavens for manual wide primes

[deleted.account]

Nice selection of Meyer Optic Gorlitz zebras including the 30mm Lydith, 50mm, 80mm Orestors, 135mm bokeh monster and the 400mm amongst a few others, majority are presets so smooth aperture rings for riding aperture when necessary. Love them. T2i.

[jordancolburn]

I was just reading this thread last week and lo and behold, yesterday I found an old pentax k1000 camera at an estate sale with 3 lenses for $25.  A 50mm 2.0 asahi pentax, tokina 80-200mm f4 push pull zoom (with a fixed focal length), and most importantly, a focal 28mm f2.8 that will let me get the wider side of things that I've been missing with the standard canon 50mm 1.8 on my cropped t3i.

I ordered the adapters yesterday and can't wait to try the lenses out for video.  If you check craigslist regularly, you should be able to find people selling old k1000s for $20-$50, with little or no info on the lens, but they usually come with a small old kit that someone has build up and present an excellent way to start a decent lens kit for almost no money.

[jgyori29]

Also, I just took a few hours today to disassemble my Takumar and remove the aperture ring's ball bearing. Feels awesome to have continuous manual aperture control!

Hey could you show me how you did this?

[TTS]

Which PK to EF adapter are you guys using?

[bart]

An interesting story about lenses for video.
http://www.shutterangle.com/2012/choosing-lenses-for-video/

[Malcolm Debono]

I started using vintage lenses quite recently. I just bought a great cheap kit over ebay consisting of 3 prime lenses (28mm, 135mm and 200mm) including mount for my Sony NEX and I already fall in love with them. You can find plenty of cheap lenses there, and adapters are quite cheap too.

[imme]

I and my friend have explored various manual focus lenses. My friend is an expert mechanic and he converted all these lenses to Canon and Nikon mounts. He has also converted some old Canon FD lenses to Canon eos without glass.

My experience is as follows

Carl Zeiss the best

Takumar comes next (specially Pentax takumar medium format lenses) Takumars are really awesome for video people. It just adds a layer of makeup on faces.

Tair Russian brand lens (lovely contrast, sharp and number of blades exceed Canon original fast primes)

I am thinking about making an external motorized focusing system for all these lens.........Can anyone at ML be helpful??  how both camera and external focusing system will sync and work together........any ML guru would like to help?? 

Regards,

Emaad
[email protected]