New uses for old lenses

Love my manual lenses! Especially the primes. I've had a few terrible manual zooms, but all the primes have ranged from good to incredible.

Thanks very much for all these posts, most useful. I'll definitely look out for a couple of Russian lenses to try out. There seems to be a plentiful supply of Helios 58mm lenses about, so I guess, bearing in mind what you've said, that's a good place to begin.

Make sure you also loko at some sample images, some of those Helios lenses have very distinctive bokeh (which some people love, but others not so much)

My own reason for using a prime was that I found the kit lens too bulky, and the reason for using an old manual focus one was that it would be a lot cheaper! A 28mm KA is attached to my K100D Super now. It is very nice to use, I agree. I've also used the 50mm prime that came with my Program A all those years ago.

I get focus confirm on all my M42 lenses, I actually find them easier to use than M series K mount lenses since you have the stop down switch on the lens to allow Av operation at apertures other than wide open.

I love my Zeiss MC Flektogon. I got it and a 135 Sonar, a Praktica camera body, kit bag and tripod for £20. Bargain of the decade for me!

I also use a Tamron 90mm SP macro in Adaptall-2 mount with a KA adaptor, and a Tamron 300mm F2.8 in the same.


There's no way I'll ever be able to afford that kind of glass brand new, so second hand manual focus is my friend!

Something that has occurred to me: Do we have a "Beginner's guide to manual lenses" here? If not, could we write one between us?

I'm thinking in terms of basic instructions for using them (enabling aperture ring, using green button in M mode, the fact that you don't need to do this with A lenses but that those need to be in A mode), and a few suggestions as to which lenses to look out for. There must be a few newbies out there who'd be interested in using an old prime lens or two but don't necessarily know how to make it work.

This sort of FAQ / wiki has been suggested a few times but not come to anything. I would have thought a PUG wiki would be a good thing as certain topics come up painfully often, such as this one. It would also be nice to have information about which of the various "cheapo" manual lenses like the Helios are worth playing with!

I know nothing about the technical side of setting up a wiki but it would be a nice addition to the site.

K.

I've got an old Soligor 135mm 2.8 that is ( in my view ) a nice lens, especially for £3, a Super Travenar 28mm 2.8 that cost £2 which is decent enough for the money, a Helios 44-2 58mm f2 that is wonderful, for free it's superb but I wouldn't be dissapointed if I'd paid money for it.
And best of all a Russian Tair 300 for £45 complete with Zenit camera. It's similar to the photosniper without the gun-stock thingy. And it's superb.

I've also got two Vivitar zoom lenses, a 80-200 f4 and a 28-200 f3.5.
The 28-200 is a cracking walkabout lens. OK, neither of them has the reputation of the Vivitar Series One lenses, but I paid £5 for one and £8 for the other.


I use all of these on my K10 and get mixed results, but most of that is down to me playing around and experimenting.
Sometimes I surprise myself though.
I have a DA 50-135, but I find myself coming back to these lenses all the time, I guess it's the challenge and interest in using them ?

For the money they are all good lenses, and none of them are really knocked about either, some are actually mint once I'd cleaned them.
I haunt the local charity and junk shops, some even save the camera stuff for me now.

I've never been too fussed on the quality of Soligor lenses (although in fairness I've not tried the 135/2.8 ), Helios 44's I believe offer the best bang-for-buck in the whole photographic world (love 'em!) and I'd agree that the Tair is also a cracking lens (albeit roughly the same weight as a family hatchback - the Photosniper gun stock really helps keep things steady with this one).

The one that caught my eye in your list though was the Travenar. I briefly owned one but it was in Praktina FX mount so I never got the chance to use it before it went on eBay - loved the little interactive DoF guide though and the build quality looked impeccable. I'd be interested to see any pictures you have taken with it on your K10 as I've idly wondered about trying to track down an M42 example for a while now...

For K100D (Super) users who may have come across this thread, a very good guide to using manual lenses is available here:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=24921509

The Manual Focus Forum is an excellent source of obscure information and example photos.

K.

No Travenars in their gallery though, I've looked before. In fact no Schacht lenses of any description...

A "Pentax ME Super with 3 lenses" just went for £156.89 on ebay (it went up from £87.55 in the last six seconds). I guess no one actually wanted the ME Super, we were all after the SMC-K 30mm f/2.8. Sadly, I didn't bid quite enough! Seems that I am not the only person peering at bad photographs of ME Super kits in case they have something interesting bundled with them.

K.

I get the impression that there are some full-time eBayers checking every camera in case anything good is bundled. Outrageous bargains are rare because of this.

Clarky seems to have the global monopoly on outragreous bargains.

K.