Vintage Lenses For Video Work

[Ashbury]

Anyone shooting Nikon AIS's or E series? If so, what's your kit? Also, if anyone here is shooting with a 35mm focal length of a vintage lens, what's your thoughts with it on a M43 body and/or M43/speedbooster setup? I'm looking at purchasing a Nikon 35mm 2.0 AIS. I think it could be a great addition that could be my all day lens for wedding work. Let me know!

Also, this was shot mostly on the Pocket 4k at 8:1. I baked in my Buttery LUT and applied a very low opacity creative LUT in Premiere (Kodak 250D).

Some GH5 footage and a couple of C100MKII shots as well.

[mcbob]

I have a mess of the things... a small set of Olympus OM Zuikos, a Vivitar Series 1 28-90, a pair of Nikon Micro-Nikkors, and the main ones that get use, a mixed set of Leica R Summilux/Summicrons converted to Nikon mount.

Metabones does the best job with focal reducers in their SpeedBooster line.

[Imamacuser]

Here's my hodgepodge lens set:

Tokina 11-16mm
Sony 16-50mm
Sigma 17-50mm
Sony 18-105mm
Nikon 24mm D
Tokina 24-40mm (some haze)
Nikon 28-80mm D
Nikon 35mm AI
Nikon 50mm D
Nikon 55-200mm (f/4-5.6)
Hasselblad 80mm CF (on semi-permanent loan from my Dad)
Olympus 135mm OM
Vivitar 200mm MD

[ozmorphasis]

I love the Ais lenses. The 28mm Ais is a very special lens. However, I've effed up focus on more than one occasion because of owning lenses with both types of focus direction. I finally got tired of it and sold off my Nikon direction lenses. I need to stick with one direction and since I will always own at least some m43 lenses, the Nikon's had to go.

[Batutta]

The 35mm 2.0 AIS is a great lens. It might be a touch long for an all day lens, even with a speedbooster, there could be tight spaces it won't be great for. The 24mm f2 might be more flexible.

[Ashbury]

I've been contemplating switching over to Metabones. I use the Viltrox and it almost does the same, I just wish it could maintain it's sharpness when my lenses are opened up! Those summicrons and simmilux sound nice, I'm jealous!

[Ashbury]

The 35mm 2.0 AIS is a great lens. It might be a touch long for an all day lens, even with a speedbooster, there could be tight spaces it won't be great for. The 24mm f2 might be more flexible.

Totally, I'd love to get my hands on a 2.0 24mm. Around a 35mm FF equivalent with the speedbooster. That sounds about right!

[James0b57]

I love the Ais lenses. The 28mm Ais is a very special lens. However, I've effed up focus on more than one occasion because of owning lenses with both types of focus direction. I finally got tired of it and sold off my Nikon direction lenses. I need to stick with one direction and since I will always own at least some m43 lenses, the Nikon's had to go.

same

[Alex H.]

Vintage Yashica ML with Yashica/Contax (C/Y) mount, adapted to EF with a MetaBones Speed Booster.

24mm f/2.8
35mm f/2.8
50mm f/1.4

They didn’t make an 85mm in this series, so I got a close approximation, a Zeiss Contax 85mm f/1.4. Also C/Y mount adapted to EF.

I had a set of these many years ago, minus the 85mm, and sold them a while back. Within a few months, I regretted selling them off. I rebuilt the set over the last couple of years.

[mcbob]

Those summicrons and summilux sound nice, I'm jealous!

The set is an Elmarit 28, Summilux 35, Summicron 50 and Summicron 90. I kind of lucked out and found them being sold off used at a local camera store right before Shane Hurlbut started blabbing and raising used R prices by 20x. They'd belonged to NatGeo photographer Bill Allard who told the shop he sold them to that he found them bumping around in his camper. The Summilux 35 in particular was externally beat to hell Glass and mechanisms were still good, though, and it's nifty to know that most of them were used on his extended "Vanishing Breed" series, amongst other projects.