Cheap and/or Old glass

PerroneFord

PerroneFord

Deals in Lead
Yes, I know this is supposed to be a forum for MOTION work with our cameras, but I thought it would be appropriate to discuss some lensing. Many have seen me make comments in recent days and weeks about the value of vintage glass. And on occasion I have talked about the value of both the kit lens (18-55) and other inexpensive zooms as long as people know what they are getting with them.

Some have said they've read reviews that the kit lenses are pretty sharp for the money. Well I also have a "kit zoom" from a Nikon film camera that does a nice job, and a few other things as well. So today, I thought I'd venture out and do some testing with a couple lenses. I'll post an Ebay link to the lens in question and then a photo or two.


http://cgi.ebay.com/CANON-EOS-EF-Mo...50478337?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item5d2ad3be01 (~$80)


_MG_0414_out.jpg


BlueFlowerSpider.png



_MG_0427_out.jpg




http://cgi.ebay.com/Canon-EF-S-18-5...30706151?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item3f02d8dbe7 (~(100)


_MG_0413_out.jpg







http://cgi.ebay.com/NIKON-NIKKOR-30...15204237?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item1c1539f58d (~120) (ca. 1972)


_MG_0406_out.jpg


(handheld)




You don't have to spend a fortune in glass to get good images. Since I shoot a very flat picture style (Marvel Cine), these images were brought into a grading application, and had their contrast brought back to standard, and their color restored to normal. They actually should be a bit sharper, but I used some diffusion in post just because I preferred the look, and I do the same often with my cinema images.

For the newbies, this is what you can do with $100 glass. You absolutely do NOT need to go spend a month's salary on a piece of glass to get good video. This glass looks this good on a 5K image. It's going to look STUNNING on 1080p or 720p.

I hope to have some examples in a week or so of what you can do with some fast primes in the 50-55mm range for $100 or less.
 
i have a Nikon 80-200 f2.8 that I picked up for $500.00. I really like it.
 

Attachments

  • Hibiscus.jpg
    Hibiscus.jpg
    338.2 KB · Views: 0
I've got a bunch of vintage manual lenses, and some of them are awesome:

* carl zeiss jena "zebra" pancolar 50mm f/1.8 (M42)
* carl zeiss jena "zebra" sonnar 135mm f/1.8 (M42)
* leitz elmarit-r 35mm f/2.8 (leica-R)
* leitz elmarit-r 90mm f/2.8 (leica-R)

others were mediocre or even totally awful:

* carl zeiss jena "zebra" flektogon 35mm f/2.8 (M42)
* carl zeiss jena "zebra" biometar 80mm f/2.8 (Pentacon Six)

here you can see some center and corner resolution tests on my One Dollar Resolution Chart:
http://www.similaar.com/foto/lenstests/lenstestsa.html

apart from being really sharp and having a very nice (and very personal) look, these lenses have a very long throw focus, which is great for manual focusing: on most of them it takes nearly a full rotation of the focus ring to go from closest to infinity

the czj zebra lenses are around $100 to $150 on ebay, the leitz are a bit more expensive, $250 to $500 on either ebay or leicashop

by the way, buying on ebay is always a risky business: the lens may be as good as advertised, or may have some marks or problems that the seller failed to acknowledge in the ad; most of my lenses were ok, but also most of them have dust inside that the seller didn't talk about (and which doesn't seem to have a big effect on image quality, at least I can't see any problems), two had trouble on the focusing ring (I repaired one, re-sold the other, stating that it had a hard-to-turn focus ring)
 
Never thought id see the day where i said " man that Carl Zeiss lens looks warm and fuzzy"
 
NormanBates said:
others were mediocre or even totally awful:

* carl zeiss jena "zebra" flektogon 35mm f/2.8 (M42)
* carl zeiss jena "zebra" biometar 80mm f/2.8 (Pentacon Six)
Click to expand...

These are both considered to be awesome. I am surprised that you find them awful.
Anyway I am expecting to receive a biometar in the next few days, and I am having fixed the same flektogon but in Exakta mount (remove the protruding aperture ring to mount in EOS, clean the glass, and fix aperture). Therefore, I will test them in person.
 
well... you can see my flektogon was totally soft and had no contrast at all at f/3.5 or lower; it didn't have any physical flaws (fungus, scratches, etc), and was kind of ok at f/5.6, which lead me to conclude that it's a design problem; of course, it might be my sample, so your mileage may vary

as for the biometar... well, that one was not awful, just mediocre, and only at f/3.5 or lower; maybe what pissed me off is that it shows soft corners on a 1.6x sensor, which is surprising for a medium format lens; in any case it's not as good as the elmarit 90mm (which I got for a very reasonable price); as a result, my biometar 80 is currently being auctioned on ebay
 
TimurCivan said:
Never thought id see the day where i said " man that Carl Zeiss lens looks warm and fuzzy"
Click to expand...

maybe it's because this one was made in warm and fuzzy communist germany :evil:

oh, and the sonnar comes form a nazi design... these lenses are part of History (though maybe not in a good way)
 
Today I went through some stores here in Argentina and whether they don't have anything or it's pretty expensive... the "lens dissapareance" phenomenon occured here as well, since the appearence of the 5D.

Nikon 24 2.8 - u$s250
" # 2 - u$s110 - haven't seen it though, don't know the condition...
Nikon 50 1.4 - u$s325
Rikenon (???) 50 1.7 - u$s35 - looked pretty smashed though. Any feedback on this one?

I have family in Florida and I usually have people coming and going so I'll just grab something from primes.decentattempt.com ... I need fast stuff, 1.4 so the 2.8s are nice but too slow.
 
Nikon is the biggest and one of the oldest names in (Japanese) still glass. If you want Nikon glass, and you want fast glass, you're going to pay. Any reason in particular you need such fast glass?

I just bought a mint Nikon 50mm F1.4 lens for $99. I also bought a near mint 50mm F1.8 M42 mount lens for $34.99.

Very few people need Nikon glass. It's NEVER been a bargain. There are advantages like the consistent look lens to lens, and adaptability for those of us who have Nikon bodies and Canon bodies, but other than that, there are other viable options.

The half stop difference between F1.4 and F1.8 is nearly negligible in the camera. But on the auctions it's worth hundreds of dollars in some cases.

There is a reason when you see that big, fast cinema glass out there, like the 18mm and the 24mm both at around F1.4, they cost $25k. Good glass is expensive.

I'm pissed off right now that the market for fast portrait glass has been driven up so high mostly by people not doing squat with it. I will never understand why someone with strobes thinks they need an 85/1.4. Makes it darn near impossible for those of us who need to do existing light work. $600 - $800 for a 30 year old lens... BAH!
 
The market for 25mm and up fast primes for 16mm format have gone up significantly since the Lumix m4/3 cameras came out too.
Angenieux 25mm f 0.95 lenses are routinely bringing well north of $1k for pristine examples.
 
Try KEH.com for used lenses, name-brand and off-brand. They rate very conservatively (their "user" gear often looks like it should be rated "near mint"), and you can return things.

You may not get the "stole it" price you can luck into on eBay, but I've bought a good deal of gear from them for the last 10 years. Good place to check - HUGE inventory.
 
So speaking of older lenses and sharpness...

I've attached an image for your perusal. This is a 1:1 crop from a dollar bill. The camera is the T2i, and the lens is a Fuji 55mm F1.8.

I paid $35 for it, but have seen them go for $20-25 in 2010.
 

Attachments

  • fujinon_dollar_crop.jpg
    fujinon_dollar_crop.jpg
    19.4 KB · Views: 0
I'm sort of on a "crappy lens" hunt; just ordered a big block of lucite to shoot through, some plus and minus diopters to stack, plastic toy lenses.

I really like the diffuse look that comes from "organic" materials like glass & plastic (vs. a plugin) and I'm interested in severe chromatic aberrations, zoom-blur like effects, etc. When I shot stills on film, I did a lot of work with multiple exposure, where I could select specific parts of an image to "treat" with bad glass, selective focus, etc. Not sure how to pull that off in the motion world (without motion control) but should be fun to experiment.

Zero photoshop, shot on 35mm tungsten film, and hand-enlarged to velvia sheet film:

1283877015.jpg


1283877051.jpg
 
AWESOME!

There is SO much fun to be had with these lenses. I can't wait to get outside with some of these uncoated lenses and see how they deal with flare. Or DON'T deal with it!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top