cheap and cheerful but high powered on digital cameras

with the introduction of digital cameras their is sudenly a glut of old manualy stopped down lenses on the market by makes like elsinor and makkinon etc

these lenses were at the top of their game in yester year as are sigma and tamron now

but of course with all the stuff about centre and edge definition these lenses fell by the wayside many moons ago

back to my origonal point these lenses are cheap and very lightweight and although the edge definition may be a bit on the questionable side (i do however use a 300mm 400mm and 500 mm and always have for both motor sport and wildlife photography) with the digital camera using a very small sensor thay only use the centre of the lens

so your quids in instead of paying £300-£400 for a digital lens why not try one of these old lenses out i mean for £5-£15 its rude not to

oh and remember the focal lengths are as follows

300mm-in-35mm = 450mm-in-digital

400mm-in-35mm = 600mm-in-digital

500mm-in-35mm = 750mm-in-digital

so not only are these lenses cheap and throw away thay are light and the focal lengths are pretty impressive to (oh and thay fit with a T2 mount m42) so thay fit all your 35mm gear to

There are some superb old lenses around, and just think of all the K mount or 42mm thread ones that can be used on our Pentax DSLRs!

There are some rich pickings for those who want to experiment....

May I add to that suggestion, that t mount opens up a whole new world of telescopes and spotting scopes and night vision scopes? one might be surprised at how well an inexpensive telescope might stack up against my older sigma 400mm with telecovers......

Going to have to agree with you about the 'older' lenses. I went into Glasgow City Centre today, to pick up my son, he was late, so I had an hour to kill, I went walk-about, dropped into Quiggs camera shop, and came out with a second-hand Tamron 500mm mirror. Price and quality both good, I just need to find a way to reclaim the money I spent from my son. Not much chance me thinks !