I’m Getting Started with Vintage Lenses!

[xaprb]

Hello everyone! I’m a new member. I am familiar with using manual-focus lenses but haven’t explored discontinued lenses and I would love your advice on “putting a few into my shopping basket” to have some fun with.

I currently own a Fujifilm X-S10 and a handful of modern Fujifilm lenses, plus a couple of the inexpensive third-party lenses made in the Fujifilm X-mount. I don’t have any adapters to the Fujifilm X-mount yet, but they’re cheap enough so that’s not an obstacle.

My goals to explore some vintage lenses are portraiture and “ambience” photos of our household items, flowers, etc; mostly close-distance and slow; I don’t need super tele or macro. I’m basically documenting our life so I can produce some books we can look back at in future years. I’m interested in using older lenses to use the lens’s character itself as an artistic medium. Fujifilm’s modern lenses are incredible optically, so I’m not necessarily looking to get “overlooked vintage lenses with amazing sharpness” or so on, more looking for lenses with great character for portraiture/still lifes. Either a unique coloring, or bokeh character, or something like that.

Budget is not a big issue, I can afford to buy some lenses without regret if I later decide it wasn’t exactly the perfect choice. I’m very fortunate in that regard.

So here’s my question, if you were me and wanted to get a few lenses that are not all in different mounts and requiring a unique adapter each, and so on, what would you consider? A convenient “package” of say 2-5, that I only have to buy one or two adapters for, and can get a variety to learn and get familiar with. They don’t even all have to be very different, for example it could be “here are two examples of variations on a widely-copied optical formula” and I could learn how to use them to their best effect and appreciate the slight variations. Think of it as kind of wine-tasting for lenses. “Learn to taste the berry and vanilla!”

I currently have a slight bias for focal lengths in the midrange, say, 35mm to 115mm, roughly; and for lenses that are sharp and bright enough to work well with my camera’s focus peaking feature. (It tends to work pretty well even with lenses that have a lot of softness, as long as they’re bright enough, say f/2.4 or f/2.8). That said, I am interested if you want to suggest that I broaden my horizons more.

I’ve been considering some of the Helios lenses but I don’t really understand the selection very well. I’ve also thought about some of the Minolta lenses due to the lovely colors I’ve seen from sample images; as a random example, I’ve admired some photos taken with the Minolta MC Rokkor-PF 55/1.7. What are your thoughts?

Also, I’m new to shopping/buying; are there good reputable stores for a US-based buyer, or is it mostly “search ebay and look around online and get them where you can”?

Thank you in advance!

[marcusBMG]

This is my standard spiel on vintage lenses:

Vintage lenses
What to pursue?
1. "Nifty fifty". The 50mm "kit" lenses sold with 35mm fim cameras give eye-similar field of view on full frame, more portrait-like moderate telephoto on apsc. Their immediate advantages over typical 18-55mm/similar digital kit lens are speed (F1.7/1.8 is typical vs f5.6 - more than 3 stops advantage) and IQ (the competitive market meant that manufacturers didn't want to be considered inferior, and even by the 1970's the design of lenses of this focal length was well understood and well refined). And final advantage - price. These can be picked up for the price of a coffee and cake. My smc-a 50mm f1.7 is my most used lens.
2. Quality macro. Close focus photography is an obvious photographic avenue to go down and while you can certainly do surprisingly well for many things (ebay pics with my G1 + 14-42mm kit lens + CF filter) with eg a close focus filter on your digital kit lens, there's not much to beat the genuine article - typically 90mm/100mm/105mm lens with focus to 1:2 or 1:1 reproduction. AF is much less useful in macro, the camera doesn't really know exactly where you want your plane of focus so the MF vs AF arguement is much less pertinent. Vivitar (a number of different ones by different manufacturers) and tamron are the most common, tamron tend to be the best value, not difficult get one of the adaptall 90mm for around a hundred bucks or even less.
Also 90mm is ideal portrait focal length on apsc, and the tack sharp iq makes them great landscape lenses.
3. (Other) Quality primes. eg 135mm - this was also a very popular focal length and a well refined optical design meaning you rarely go wrong with one - high iq. OEM (inc takumars, pentax smc's ) and Soviet era lenses like Jupiter, Tair, Carl Zeiss Jena are immediate suggestions.
One caveat: wide angle in the digital era has definitely improved beyond the norm of the film era (as a simple generalisation), and there can be issues with vintage 24mm/28mm like field curvature on digital. Still worth judiciously seeking out the plums mind you, and 28mm is approx like a standard lens on apsc. Check out the 28mm club.
4. Telephotos. While modern big lenses really are radically good, if you'd rather spend $50 instead of $5000 there is lots of choice.
5. Lenses of particular interest/character. Mirror lenses are one of the first to come to mind in this category, tamron are the ones to go for, Soviet ones like Rubinar or MTO can also be very good and interesting (avoid cheap new ones off amazon). Then there are lenses known for eg bubble or swirly bokeh (helios for the latter).
6. Iconic/historic zooms. As per comment re wide angles, modern zooms as a rule are simply better. But it's still worth seeking out the plums, indeed that's the game! Vivitar serries 1, tamron adaptalls, contax/zeiss etc.

For the photography you have indicated, maybe think about a fastish nifty fifty and macros/quality 135's? You have an interesting choice re possibly concentrating on one mount/brand. For a range of quality and interest, and a price benefit due to the mounts not being compatible with modern dslr's (but adapters readily available for mirrorless), old canon CFD lenses, konica hexanon lenses or old minolta MD lenses could be the way to go. Others can be more specific, I don't go for these myself.

[georgegrant]

Since you mentioned that you'd like to go close on subjects/flowers etc - and the X-S10 which I also use:

1) Meyer Optik Oreston 50mm 1.8 - Very close focus distance, almost same optics as the Zeiss Pancolar 1.8. Get the M42 mount (!) I even use this lens in commercial advertisements, it's that good ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8wX5sOfhDw )
2) Schneider-Kreuznach Curtagon 35mm 2.8 - This is one of my most used lenses. The bokeh and close focus distance is amazing - again M42 mount
3) Canon FL 58mm 1.2 (first version) - for those soft dreamy wide open aperture shots, the best 1.2 lens for the money (imho) - the similar FD SSC version is for pixel peepers. (FL Mount)
4) Canon nFD 200mm 2.8 or the Praktica 200mm 2.8 - both are amazing tele-photo lenses. If you want to spend more cash get the Zeiss 180mm 2.5 but she is difficult to find.

Thats a good start and those lenses work perfectly with the X-S10 - now, I would throw in a Lensturbo II FX to FD focal reducer which gives you full-frame coverage. You can attach the FD lenses directly to it - and get some cheap M42->FD adapters for your M42 lenses and you're good to go. The FX/FD focal reducer has the shortest focal distance giving you also the option to mount other mounts such as EXA (EXA->M42-> Lens Turbo) and even DKL. Don't get the FX/EF, you won't be able to mount FD lenses.

I really recommend the first two lenses. Here is how that combo looks like.
WechatIMG777 by george grant, on Flickr


If you get the lens turbo get some sandpaper and sand away the black paint it makes a good combo with older 'shiny' lenses (or diy customized ones like the one in the photo).
WechatIMG776 by george grant, on Flickr

Welcome to the rabbit hole
George

[KEO]

[vivaldibow]

[stevemark]

[kymarto]

Let me suggest that you do some online research to see the looks of various lenses. A few sites I recommend are:

https://oldlenses.blogspot.com/

https://spiral-m42.blogspot.com/

https://flashbackcamera.jp/photogallery/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/59224964@N05/ (Matt's Crazy Lens Adventures)

https://toby-marshall.com/

The last is mine, and I have arranged it in order that mostly each lens that I have has its own separate gallery. Be aware that I shoot for bokeh and I post process to bring out certain characteristics of the lenses, so my galleries are somewhat specialized. There are others out there as well. Flick is a particularly good resource: search for the name of the lens that interests you and you can see many examples of how different photographers use a particular piece of glass. You can also do an image search with Google to see both pictures of various lenses and pictures taken with them.

I have generally found it useless to ask people what they recommend, since each person has a different idea of what is good, and generally people don't have a lot of different lenses to compare in their own use. They might love their specific 135mm lens and highly recommend it, but unless they have five or six and can compare them directly, and address your interests specifically (sharpness, mechanics, bokeh quality, handling) advice like that is not very useful IMO. Of course it can be a good way to find out the names of various lenses so that you do further research.

Once you have found some lenses that pique your interest, that is the time to ask people specifically about their experiences with those lenses.

[kymarto]

[georgegrant]

[georgegrant]

[Zamo]

Welcome to this world! You can expect a lot of fun. Strangely, I fully agree with all that has been said (except with the APSC sensors being adequate or not... I have no idea about that, or the contrary).

In this forum you will find many fans of Konica Hexanons. I am among them, wonderful quality, second to none (at least to none of the terrestrial lenses. Leitz, etc supposedly play in a different category. I have no experience with them). There are pretty much no bad Hexanons. And some of them are very good, and, usually, fairly cheap compared to other brands. Or at least, not overpriced. Personal favorites: 35 2.8, 50 1.7, 57 1.4, 85 1.8, 100 2.8, 135 2.5. all of them great lenses. 50 1.7 in particular is ridiculously cheap and the first one of the list I would get. I would recommend to buy, try and enjoy many lenses. You can sell the ones that you disliked or those that bore you, usually at about the same price you bought them.

A few specific lenses you will find sooner or later (not even close to a comprehensive list by any means):
- Helios 44-2 (or 44-something) and its famous swirly bokeh (hint: in APSC sensors you get much less swirl, since it is more prominent in the corners of the film/sensor, and your APSC is smaller than the original ones). Strange lens, very cheap, easy to fix by yourself if needed... I have had several, get bored with them and sold them all. But some people really love them, it is a must-try.
- Pentacon 135 2.8, first version 8closes to 36 if I remember well, instead of 22 as the 2nd version does). Much larger than the second one, soft, not really very sharp, but its bokeh is wonderful. So it makes a great lens for portraits.
- Pentacon 50 1.8. Dirt cheap, not really worth it, but having seen some pictures made with it, you realized that the greatest part of a good photo is the photographer. Does its job, nothing else, so I would not bother trying... for 10-20 bucks more you can have much better lenses. But it is everywhere.
- Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35mm 2.4 and 2.8. The 2.4 is very famous, somewhat expensive. I never understood why... I find the SMC Takumar 35 3.5 much better... (slower, that for sure, but still). But there are legions of followers. I might be wrong. The 2.8 has quite some "character". Not sure why, but I like it, I have kept this one, did not keep any of the more expensive 2.4s.
- CZJ 50mm Pancolar 1.8. Not the sharpest, not the anythingest, but I like it a lot. Love its colors, and have some of my favorite pictures takes with it.
- CZJ Sonnar 135mm 3.5. Also quite famous, fairly cheap, I consider it a real keeper, great everything. A joy to use.


You ask about the Helios in particular. I imagine you mean the Helios 44 (58mm f2), the most famous of them. It is a copy of the Zeiss Biotar, made in the USSR. I think the order, from oldest ot newest, is 44, 44-2, 44-3, 44M, 44M-4, etc until 44M-7. They become sharper each time, and after 44M they go to 6 blades instead of 8. Full list and info here: http://forum.mflenses.com/complete-helios-lens-list-anyone-t11435.html
My experience, not having tested them profoundly and comparatively, is that they do become sharper the younger they are, best for swirly bokeh were 44-2 and 44M (have never tried just "44"), and, as said, I was never convinced by them. Careful with 44-7, there are many fakes. Still, very cheap to buy, so go ahead and try. I would start with a 44-2, even if only for the look of the lens itself.

[Ernst Dinkla]

Vintage lenses on different sensor types and sizes are hard to compare. Add to that the pixel density and the different sensor technologies. Like with MTF measurements the image quality and character is based on the combination of both components. If a lens can not 'outresolve' a sensor there still will be a difference in MTF results when used on a same size lower pixel density sensor of the same brand and generation. So will the expression of the character of the lens change. Cropped sensors (to the original format the lens was designed for) do not reveal the total character nor the total optical quality of the lens used. Speed boosters add their own character to the character of the lens, I doubt a neutral focal reducer can be designed or made.

If I need say 40 MP for a large print, have one lens and a choice between a 20 MP sensor or a 40MP sensor of the same size/brand/generation I will take the last one. Even when the pixels are a bit void due to the quality of the lens the alternative would be added pixels extrapolated from a smaller sampling base. In my experience you better build on more original pixels with all kinds of image editing algorithms than just extrapolate from less pixels that seem better.

An interesting thing about multiple sensor shift takes like possible with Olympus m4/3 cameras for a decade I guess (Sinar backs/cameras had it much longer), Pentax APS and now on more FF cameras, is that the image quality enhancement does not ask for higher resolution lenses than used in a single take. The main thing done is overcoming the limitations of the sensor's Bayer mosaic. Where half pixel shifts are made one could argue that lenses easily outresolving the sensor have an advantage but simple oversampling can already increase the resulting image quality. There is some analogy in flatbed film scanners that have a way higher sampling resolution than the actual pixel pitch of their sensors should allow. Yet lower noise, the result of oversampling, can increase the dynamic range of the scanner.

[vivaldibow]

[KEO]

[stevemark]

[caspert79]

I would probably recommend something like this:

Minolta MD 35/2.8. Seriously good performer, compact and quite affordable.

SMC Takumar 55mm f/1.8. Cheap, compact, fast enough, very good optics and top notch mechanical quality.

Tokina AT-X 90mm f/2.5 macro. Magnification is 1:2, or 1:1 if you buy the extender as well. It comes in different mounts, amazing performer, and suitable for landscape, portrait and macro. A very versatile lens.

[uddhava]

Welcome to the forum!
Hope you end up with some nice lenses.
I will be happy to hear what you buy and to see some photos.
Good luck and have fun!

[kypfer]

All sorts of good recommendations above

What got me started? The Meyer Optik Lydith 30mm f/3.5!
I figured if someone thought it was worthwhile setting up a production facility to produce "reproductions" in modern mounts, finding an original might be interesting.
I found one for less than £30 on eBay, complete with M42-PK adaptor already fitted … well worth the money The same lens, of later manufacture, is also available with "Pentacon" branding, but beware, there were also 28mm and 29mm Pentacon lenses, all very good, but not a Lydith

Everyone interested in this sort of thing should have at least one triplet … the vastly under-rated Domiplan is very good. The "triplet bokeh" effects are only really available wide open, so the 6-blade aperture isn't really a problem.
Similarly, a Helios-44 … I've got a 44-2 and a 44-M, the latter being easier to use, having an a/m switch, but pre-set diaphragms can give a certain amount of satisfaction from "getting it right" and "knowing what you're doing"

Afterthought :- don't forget the Zeiss Tessar 50mm f/2.8, an all-time classic and still capable of doing an outstanding job.
If you can't find a "proper" Tessar, one of the Russian Industars will serve adequately. The Industar 50-2, with it's awkward recessed aperture ring, is probably the most readily available and surprisingly compact for anyone used to the bulkiness of most modern a/f lenses

My "collection" has expanded somewhat since then, all bought cheaply, but most of them were tried and put in the drawer as not being "anything spectacular", though no massive disappointments either.

Good luck … and enjoy

[Lightshow]

Minolta SR:
28/2.5 - it's sharp, provides lots of character wide open and gets more clinical as you stop down. You say you aren't really interested in wider than 35mm, well, you're missing out, 28mm on APSC is wonderful as a normal, my favourite lens on my NEX-7 is my Leica M 28/2.8 version 2.
58/1.2 - it's a well known lens for character and bokeh.
100/2 - it's a great portrait lens.

Olympus OM:
21/3.5 - I absolutely love this for night shooting on a tripod, coma is well controlled and has nice stars.
55/1.2 - bokeh and character is what this lens is all about, it gets funky.

Canon FL/FD:
SSC 24/2.8, 50/1.4, 85/1.8, wonderful set of lenses that are very similar in size, ergonomically almost perfect.

FL 58/1.2 has tons of character like the OM 55/1.2 & Minolta 58/1.2, the FL 55/1.2 has smoother less funky bokeh, it's also a nice lens, one of the most economical f1.2 lenses.

Konica 57/1.2 & Nikkor-s 58/1.4 silver nose - Another couple bokeh/character lenses.

Pentax Pen F 38/1.8 - nice tiny little lens.

Pentax Super Takumar 28/3.5(early), 55/1.8, 85/1.9 nice rendering/bokeh and wonderfully built.

Helios 44-2 (58/2) and 40-2 (85/1.5) are nice no frills lenses that provide swirly bokeh when shooting up close, I'm also a big fan of preset lenses, I like the ability to adjust the aperture to any setting without being forced to use the indexed/detents positions, it lets me choose the optimum aperture to get the DOF I want for the subject. These Helios lenses are of simple construction that makes then relatively easy to service.

The last lens I'm going to include in this post is my Yashica Tominon Super Yashinon-R 3.5cm/2.8 preset(yeah it's a mouthful), the rendering of this lens is amazing, it has tons of three dimensional (3D)pop with nice smooth bokeh, close up subjects have a reach out and touch them look/feel to the pictures.

[alex ph]

Xaprb, out of curiousity, tell us please which choice you made.

[xaprb]

Hello everyone! Thank you all for your kindness and for being so generous with your time. I think your suggestions will provide me with many pleasant hours of browsing galleries and learning! I have already been having a lot of fun.

I bought a Helios 44-2 and it arrived this morning. Here's a photo of my dog with UFOs above her head waiting to abduct her. Fortunately she's a Rhodesian Ridgeback so she's always alert. Those UFOs don't have a chance.

Thanks again! After (okay, while) I learn how to use the Helios's strengths, I am planning to look into Minolta, including many of the ones you've suggested. I don't know why, exactly; just something you and others have said about them have registered with me, and I trust my instinct on it.

#1

[uddhava]

I think Minolta lenses can be a good choice. Not too expensive, nice lenses.
I like some of their zoom lenses as well.
Still there are some nice lenses with M42 mount.

[jamaeolus]

Most will recommend of course the Asahi Pentax Takumar, and Carl Zeiss Jena, Leica and of course the Japanese mainstays Canon, Nikon. Minolta, Olympus. Carl Zeiss or the German second tier Meyer, Schacht, Steinheil. IMHO Konica, and Schneider retina are often overlooked for various reasons. They are both fantastic at nearly every focal length. The Russian lenses can bv\e very very good and prices tend to be low but beware quality control can be an issue so just because one example doesn't work doesn't mean that they all are. Spend time on ebay looking at prices. Look at the sold prices for a good idea of what is actually a reasonable purchase as some sellers ask ridiculous prices and sometimes foolish people pay. Bear in mind that there are 2 main types of vintage lens buyers. Collectors and users. Some will do both. Collectors want rare, pretty, unused, historical lenses in the original box with complete provenance and will sometimes pay a 2-3 x premium for them. Users want a serviceable version that has excellent optics. The first adapter I would recommend is the M42. I am not familiar with Fuji but if there is a helicoid adapter I would recommend that as it allows a lot better close focusing for vintage lenses that often suffer from not so great minimum focus length. Warning: Playing with vintage lenses can be addicting.

[alex ph]

Good choice of the lenses, you'll surely have much of joy with their contrasted characters.

Smart dog and well taken! In- to out-focus transitions are lovely.

[KEO]