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I was wondering what the opinion of older lens on dslr is by most photographers. I have spotted a fast lens for low light & its pretty cheap, it comes with a lens adapter etc.
Are these good or do you lose anything in the conversion >?
I'm no expert by any means, but I have a few rather nice M42 mount legacy lenses which produce fabulous results..
I'm currently using a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 85mm & 135mm as well as a stunning little Steinheil Munchen 50mm lens that were all found in a friend's attic...
Manual focus only with the adapter I have, but they really do produce results!
This is one from the CZJ 85mm...straight out of the camera...no editing at all, just taken against a backdrop of snow...
...and this is just a test shot from the tiddly little Steinheil Munchen lens...
It's so sharp you could cut yourself if you weren't careful!
I was lucky with the lenses we found as they are absolutely superb and in excellent condition.
I do struggle a bit with manual focus, but I'm sure I can get better results if I persevere a bit! I've been tempted with the focus confirm adapters, but haven't gone for one yet...
I was wondering what the opinion of older lens on dslr is by most photographers. I have spotted a fast lens for low light & its pretty cheap, it comes with a lens adapter etc.
Are these good or do you lose anything in the conversion >?
I use many old MF lenses on my cameras and I'm happy with them.
Many of them can fill your lens inventory with useful focal lengths and bright apertures but the best lenses ain't cheap.
There are bargains of course and there may be significant price differences depending on the condition of the lens, date of manufacture or even the serial number.
Also, many old lenses (especially made in Germany or USSR) produce magnificent and smooth bokeh that is somewhat hard to achieve with new AF/digital lenses.
Some of my favourite lenses are not very sharp, yet I cherish them because of their quality bokeh and overall vintage look of the photos they take (for example Jupiter-8 50mm f/2 and Pentacon 29mm f/2.8).
However, there are disadvantages.
Many old lenses have no multi-coatings, thus being suspectible on stray light and are prone to flares, use the lens hood all the time.
Also, unless you have a FF camera, you have to multiply the actual focal length of the lens to the crop factor to give you the effective focal length.
This could be a good thing for telephotos but not good for wide-angles.
In addition, on a crop camera you may get excellent sharpness since the sensor uses the center of the glass (the best part) but CA may be exaggerated.
After breaking through the technology barrier,
you run into the barrier of accepted wisdom.
Can depend on what subject matter your shooting and which body your using at first. Camera body purely for the ease of focusing to begin with, using live view. For fast moving subjects or low light wide open make sure your diopter is calibrated, then forward and back focus with a snap to the mid point.
My personal fave for the moment is the om 50mm f1.4, but such fast glass can throw out the metering system when set wider than f2. Best way around this I've found is using a baffle and or lens hood, or even a polarizing filter.
Love the results from such glass, but does need some practise for use.
I was wondering what the opinion of older lens on dslr is by most photographers. I have spotted a fast lens for low light & its pretty cheap, it comes with a lens adapter etc.
Are these good or do you lose anything in the conversion >?
The main thing is can you manually focus with your camera? Some DSLR's aren't exactly easy to manually focus with but if by DSLR you mean something with live view or magnified view then MF is possible. I mostly use manual lenses on my G1.
The main thing is can you manually focus with your camera? Some DSLR's aren't exactly easy to manually focus with but if by DSLR you mean something with live view or magnified view then MF is possible. I mostly use manual lenses on my G1.
You could get one of these....
Just like in the good old OM-2n days, I wanted something to ease the focusing with OM lenses on my E-1. The Katzeye split focusing screen is incredibly easy to fit on THAT model.
David -------------------------- -XZ-1 * VF-2+EP-9 --------------------------
I've got no problem manually focussing legacy glass on my 4/3 bodies. I actually prefer plain screens and changed all the screens in my OM bodies to plain ones.
It's the image that's important, not the tools used to make it.
Just like in the good old OM-2n days, I wanted something to ease the focusing with OM lenses on my E-1. The Katzeye split focusing screen is incredibly easy to fit on THAT model.
It all depends on what the OP means by DSLR. If for example the OP is talking about something like a Canon 1000D, 60D etc... you can't change the focus screen... and even if you could you're still left with a relateively small VF to use.
Personally I'm happiest when manually focusing with a camera with some sort of MF aid, like magnified view.
Hi I do have an e-420 I am just starting out and have limited budget. I was looking to find out opinion on legacy lens as these are are lot cheaper...
Also does that katzeye make it easier to manual focus ?
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