Top 4 vintage lenses

[Steve Oakley]

Originally Posted by James Donnelly

Like an old lens, the thread has been dusted down for the modern era.

My previous faves:

o Takumar SMC 85mm f/1.9 - Another magnificent lens - beautiful colours
o Pentacon 135mm f/2.8 15 blade - AKA the bokeh monster with good reason. Sharp lens. Preset aperture - no clicks! I wish all my manual lenses were de-clicked.
o Vivitar series 1 28mm f/1.9 - Not a flawless lens - fluffy wide open. Definite look. Cheap, fast, good, choose any two of the above!
o Vivitar 28mm f/2 - better than the f/1.9 mentioned above, and not a series one, but it's much sharper wide open without the halation in the f/1.9. This one actually is cheap, fast and good. There are tons of these - Vivitar is just a badge. Everyone should have one because they're cheap. See this great resource:

Great Vivitar 28mm Bestiary

James, thanks for that. I have a pile of glass here - Vivitar 24 F2, 28 1.9, kiron 28 2.0 ( blue markings ) . the 24 F2 is really becoming a lens I have on the camera a lot ( 60D's ) because its modestly wide and pretty fast. the 1.9 though has its own look - its VERY prone to flare. a window in a shot can wash it out. However when used with care you can make some great flares with it.

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi Barry,

"HI Joel, I have 3 canon fd lenses all from ebay the 3 cost less than £100,and all are pinsharp,must be my best buy yet. I have a link.The test shots on vimeo don't show as sharp as on my tv."

Nice! Its nice to see how things have changed even in just the last year in regards to converting lenses. There are quite a few people now switching FD to EOS mounts. I have a 50mm 1.4 FD I love - its light, there are half-stop clicks and its the sharpest lens in the 50-58mm range I own when wide open. In truth its a lot like the Samyang 35 1.4 I use a lot - its sort of boring. It does what its supposed to do without any fanfare - its not especially "fun" to use, doesn't have the big-metal feel, has no quirks and it doesn't have a unique look like a lot of other vintage lenses. It just works. I don't know who did the conversion - it wasn't Jim Buchanan who did my FL lenses, though he does work with FD though less frequently. FWIW he has a new efficient way to convert long FD's - 300mm and up - that is less expensive than it used to be.

Attached are the tests I ran when the lens arrived - including a 100% crop at 1.4, 1.8 and 2.0.

[Chad Andreo]

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