Currently playing with a 50mm 1980s vintage M42 mount primes on a DSLR.
The poor optical transfer of the lens makes it useless at 18MP stills, but it is easily good enough for 2 MP HD. Looking at the video, a modern lens is sharp enough to cause significant aliasing and moiré. The old lens isn't sharp enough to pass much high frequency detail above that which can be present in HD (aliasing is caused by frequencies higher than the video signal can display). The old lens produces very sharp HD without aliasing.
Additionally it's designed to be manually focussed and I'm hoping to be able to modify the aperture to be continuous, not discrete. It seems to work from f/2 to f/14.
Needs a bit more work, but well worth the £6 it cost.
The poor optical transfer of the lens makes it useless at 18MP stills, but it is easily good enough for 2 MP HD. Looking at the video, a modern lens is sharp enough to cause significant aliasing and moiré. The old lens isn't sharp enough to pass much high frequency detail above that which can be present in HD (aliasing is caused by frequencies higher than the video signal can display). The old lens produces very sharp HD without aliasing.
Additionally it's designed to be manually focussed and I'm hoping to be able to modify the aperture to be continuous, not discrete. It seems to work from f/2 to f/14.
Needs a bit more work, but well worth the £6 it cost.