The Vintage + Classic Adapted Glass Thread

I've lost count of the amount of vintage lenses I've bought and sold.
Every few months I tell myself that I don't need auto focus 95% of the time so go looking for some older glass.
After using for a few weeks the lure of af brings me back.

I've still got a few that I use now and again, my favourite probably being my Canon FD 135mm f/2.5.
This was shot with it on a Sony A7RII
Dunmore July 18 by barrysprout, on Flickr

I often stop at boot sales if I'm passing but bargains are few and far between these days.
Early last year I came across an aluminium Helios case that contained a faulty camera, flash and three Helios lenses. 28mm 58mm and a 135mm. Ordered a Fuji X-Pro1 and a lens turbo II for a semi retro manual kit.
Pictured here along with my Vivitar 19mm.

Semi Retro Kit by barrysprout, on Flickr

this shot was with the X-Pro1, Vivitar 19mm on Lens TurboII
Kelpies by barrysprout, on Flickr

Helios 28mm on X-T2
Helios 28mm by barrysprout, on Flickr

Helios 135mm on X-T2
Helios 135mm by barrysprout, on Flickr

Helios 135mm by barrysprout, on Flickr
 
I'm pretty sure this was with the Canon 70-210mm f4 FD mount, but there is an outside chance it might have been a Tamron 135mm f2.8 Adaptall... On a Fuji X-E1:


Jennie
by JJ_Glos, on Flickr

To be honest I guess it could be a number of lenses, I always forget which I was using!

I try to add the info in when I remember to in Flickr, with the G80 I have to input the FL for the ibis each time I attach an adapter lens but it doesn't show in the exif data afaik
 
I've lost count of the amount of vintage lenses I've bought and sold.
Every few months I tell myself that I don't need auto focus 95% of the time so go looking for some older glass.
After using for a few weeks the lure of af brings me back.

I've still got a few that I use now and again, my favourite probably being my Canon FD 135mm f/2.5.
This was shot with it on a Sony A7RII
Dunmore July 18 by barrysprout, on Flickr

I often stop at boot sales if I'm passing but bargains are few and far between these days.
Early last year I came across an aluminium Helios case that contained a faulty camera, flash and three Helios lenses. 28mm 58mm and a 135mm. Ordered a Fuji X-Pro1 and a lens turbo II for a semi retro manual kit.
Pictured here along with my Vivitar 19mm.

Semi Retro Kit by barrysprout, on Flickr

this shot was with the X-Pro1, Vivitar 19mm on Lens TurboII
Kelpies by barrysprout, on Flickr

Helios 28mm on X-T2
Helios 28mm by barrysprout, on Flickr

Helios 135mm on X-T2
Helios 135mm by barrysprout, on Flickr

Helios 135mm by barrysprout, on Flickr

Very nice find. There's never any place near me that sells old camera gear. There's a guy on youtube called Adapted Alpha, and he claims he gets these pristine old lenses in his local thrift store all the time for less than $10. He shoes them then mounted to a Sony A6000, hence the alias. Makes me sick! :D I'd have to pay more than 5x what he claims to have for similar condition on certain lenses.
 
Very nice find. There's never any place near me that sells old camera gear. There's a guy on youtube called Adapted Alpha, and he claims he gets these pristine old lenses in his local thrift store all the time for less than $10. He shoes them then mounted to a Sony A6000, hence the alias. Makes me sick! :D I'd have to pay more than 5x what he claims to have for similar condition on certain lenses.

I think the days of real bargains are mostly passed now.
Managed to dig up this picture of a lens I picked up at a boot sale back in 2010.

IMG_4852.JPG

It was an Ohnar 300mm mirror lens with a mount I didn't recognize at the time. With help on here I got an adapter to try it out on my Canon 50D. Shockingly bad images!
However I wasn't too upset as the lens came in a bundle of items that I picked up for a total of £12

The bundle was:
Praktica BMS Electronic
carl zeiss jena 28mm 2.8 for above
Prakticar 50mm 1.8 for above
and a Prakticar 2x teleconverter
a Zenit EM black with Pentacon 1.8/50mm

a pair of bashed up Tohyoh bino's

And the Ohnar 300mm mirror lens

After some research I sold the Ohnar lens to a chap in Germany for £180.

Everything else is long gone too apart from the Tohyoh binoculars which still get an occasional outing.

Not sure the profit was worth it as it has led to many hours wasted at boot sales looking for another such bargain to no avail,
 
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Yup, with the rise of mirrorless prices for film era lenses seem have risen and there seem to be fewer good condition ones at reasonable prices. I'm watching one at the moment but I expect the price to rise a lot as we near the end of the auction, I expect it to go for much more than I'm willing to pay.
 
There is money to be made for those who put the work in and are clever enough. People will pay up for convenience too. I paid £40 for the Helios 44-2, it was in very good nick, that was the max I'd pay for it. The guy who came to collect the 135 CZJ offered me 60 for it on the spot, even after I'd told him what I had paid. He had planned to get one at some point, he had been doing the research, but didn't want the hassle of ebay
 
Very interesting thread, been reading it with interest. Inspired me to get off my backside, and hunt for my very old lenses. Just looked in the place where I keep all my old and obsolete stuff, stuff that I never intend to use again. Items that I can't bring myself to bin. Can't find the lenses, I must have binned them after all. :confused:
 
Very interesting thread, been reading it with interest. Inspired me to get off my backside, and hunt for my very old lenses. Just looked in the place where I keep all my old and obsolete stuff, stuff that I never intend to use again. Items that I can't bring myself to bin. Can't find the lenses, I must have binned them after all. :confused:

The attic perhaps? Where many an old neglected lens ends up I imagine.

Another thing I love about these old lenses apart from the character or price, it's the nostalgia, the history - Once you start researching it can lead you down a very long road of discovery. It can get a little head wrecking too though, with so many variants on the one model. Specific serial numbers or manufacturers being much better than what initially appears to be the exact same lens. Take the Vivitar range, they didn't actually manufacture lenses, they were a major distributor. The same lens under their brand can be manufactured by numerous companies, and might even be optically very different in some cases.

Here's a guide for anyone interested who owns some old Vivitar glass, the first 2 digits of the serial number tells you who actually manufactured it. For example, my 200mm F3.5 serial starts with '28' - going by this list that tells me it was made by Komine. https://www.cameraquest.com/VivLensManuf.htm
 
The attic perhaps? Where many an old neglected lens ends up I imagine.

No, because of the house configuration, a skinny hamster could not get access to the attic.... Sadly, obviously been binned. :(
 
I have loads of adapted lenses (I haven't adopted any of them).
Some are new lenses designed for other mounts like my ultra macro lens here:
ultra macro lens set up by Mike Kanssen, on Flickr
That one couldn't really be classed legacy let alone vintage!

I'm not sure how you define vintage but I think this shot should be OK - taken with an 80 year old Kodak 12cm astigmat, which I mounted on a body cap & stuck on my bellows.
black scorpion 2 stack by Mike Kanssen, on Flickr

FWIW I now use projector lenses, enlarger lenses, c-mount CCTV lenses, and over half a dozen adapted SLR mounts (PK, M42, T2, OM, auto 110, Minolta A, FD, AI, MD, in approximate order of frequency) as well as coupling up to telescopes & a microscope. Despite the wide range here I probably still take more shots with native lenses than adapted ones.

To add some variety here's one through a cheap Helios telescope 1000mm f8.7 (tucked under my arm)
Helios 1000mm f/8.7 scope handheld adj usm by Mike Kanssen, on Flickr
 
I think it's the camera that 'adopts' them, and the lens is then 'adapted' to fit ;) I have enough kids, don't want to adopt any extra :eek::D
 
I try to add the info in when I remember to in Flickr, with the G80 I have to input the FL for the ibis each time I attach an adapter lens but it doesn't show in the exif data afaik

I have good intentions to do that, but it's usually at the very least days afterwards that I get around to processing, and I've forgotten which is which by then :D

On the Fuji you can set the focal length and it shows in the EXIF details but I keep forgetting to do that as well!
 
I have good intentions to do that, but it's usually at the very least days afterwards that I get around to processing, and I've forgotten which is which by then :D

On the Fuji you can set the focal length and it shows in the EXIF details but I keep forgetting to do that as well!

Yeah I remember that, looking through some of my old vintage glass images on Flickr I see that with the Fuji bodies the FL is shown, but I do remember you have to manually input it for each lens. The camera will remember the last one I think? With M43 it's different, because you're telling the camera the FL for IBIS purposes. Only the shutter speed and ISO get shown, like this mushroom shot I took with the Canon FD 50mm macro, if you click through to it on Flickr you'll see no FL or aperture value are shown at all:
Fungi-nibble by K G, on Flickr
 
An 80's vintage CZJ 120/2.8 MC Biometar (Pentacon Six mount) wide open on a Pentax 645Z. The Biometar gets frequent criticism for its softness at the edges of the frame but this isn't an issue on the smaller 645 format film/sensor.

p1906981625-4.jpg
 
Pricey one that!

I fancy a 135 2.8, must have a look into them again. Had the Carl Zeiss 3.5 which was nice enough, small, tidy, well built, pretty sharp, but I tend to use a 200mm more. A 135 on M43 is a bit tight for indoors, then not long enough for outside I found
 
Now we're getting pricey, you're more into £300+ territory now [depending on the condition] I think you should pass it on over here, it looks broken, your poor wife has been completely blurred out! :D

I didn't pay anything like that for it as I bought it a few years ago before prices rose too much.

These days even things that used to be cheap like 28mm f2.8 and 50mm f1.8 are going up. You used to be able to pick these up for £15 but now you can pay £60, if you like.
 
I didn't pay anything like that for it as I bought it a few years ago before prices rose too much.

These days even things that used to be cheap like 28mm f2.8 and 50mm f1.8 are going up. You used to be able to pick these up for £15 but now you can pay £60, if you like.

Like everything else then. I remember working with much older guys who boasted they bought their house for €15K, and in today's market the same houses fetch €250K+ - even with inflation factored in that's quite a massive hike

Things are only worth what someone is willing to pay.

I'd love that 50 1.2, but no way I'd pay £300, which is what they are up there for now. For that money I'd just get a nice native lens. Part of the appeal of vintage is the low cost
 
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Nikon 50mm f2. It's just a simple little picture but like this one.

1-DSC01955.jpg

I think this one was taken with my Tokina 17mm f3.5.

1-DSC08609.jpg

This one too.

1-DSC08831.jpg

I bought a Vivitar 20mm f3.5 and later a Tokina 17mm f3.5 expecting to crop them to crop out poor corners end still end up with a decent wide picture but they both surprised me as I think that as whole pictures they're really not too bad in the corners, unless you look closely.
 
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I'd love that 50 1.2, but no way I'd pay £300, which is what they are up there for now. For that money I'd just get a nice native lens. Part of the appeal of vintage is the low cost

There are some modern 50mm f1.0-f1.2's on the market now but I don't know anything about them whereas the film era ones are known qualities and you can use them on any mirrorless camera plus they have their own look which is the appeal for me. That Minolta 50mm f1.2 really is a dual use lens, at wide apertures it has its look and stopped down it could be almost any old lens.
 
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There are some modern 50mm f1.0-f1.2's on the market now but I don't know anything about them whereas the film era ones are known qualities and you can use them on any mirrorless camera plus they have their won look which is the appeal for me. That Minolta 50mm f1.2 really is a dual use lens, at wide apertures it has its look and stopped down it could be almost any old lens.


I've been looking into some of the modern MF options, some that come in M43 mount, some need adapting, very cheap, but like you mention, do they have that .... something? more research required on that. There's 7artisans, Kamlan, of course we all know Samyang - I know first hand their lenses are superb for the money, I had the 12mm F2 and only sold it on because I discovered 12mm, even on M43 is too wide for me in general.

There's a 7artisans 35mm f/1.2 for MFT out there for £139 - sounds amazing, but reviews are a mixed bag. Like all of these cheaper options it seems they need stopping down a bit for best results, if I could be convinced it was sharp wide open I'd probably already have one. But then they'd probably be more expensive.
 
Googling to some example pictures might be helpful but I'm wary of buying too much stuff in a modern native mount as it ties you more to a camera manufacturer whereas with the film era lenses if you change camera bodies all you need is another adapter.

Speaking of adapters. I have Novoflex adapters for Canon, Olympus and Minolta and they're about £90-100 each but to be honest the £10-20 ones you get off evil bay seem to work just as well. I have cheap adapters for MFT and also for using my Nikon lenses on my Sony FF. I've read reports from others saying that the cheap adapters can be a lottery but so far I must have been lucky as I've had no problem with them. I think I've learned a lesson there and I don't think I'll be paying £90 for any adapters in the future unless there's no other choice.
 
Gulp - all my glass is now what everybody is calling 'Vintage' - No autofocus lenses left in my kit bag.



Match 1 by Fraser White, on Flickr

Rollei 2.8 80mm Planar on bellows - shot on film :)


You're just ahead of the times maybe? :D Striking image!! [bet you get that a lot on this one?]

Googling to some example pictures might be helpful but I'm wary of buying too much stuff in a modern native mount as it ties you more to a camera manufacturer whereas with the film era lenses if you change camera bodies all you need is another adapter.

Speaking of adapters. I have Novoflex adapters for Canon, Olympus and Minolta and they're about £90-100 each but to be honest the £10-20 ones you get off evil bay seem to work just as well. I have cheap adapters for MFT and also for using my Nikon lenses on my Sony FF. I've read reports from others saying that the cheap adapters can be a lottery but so far I must have been lucky as I've had no problem with them. I think I've learned a lesson there and I don't think I'll be paying £90 for any adapters in the future unless there's no other choice.


Bought a bunch of what they refer to as 'dumb' adapters over the past few years, not had any niggles with any of them and the most I paid was £20, normally about a tenner. The £20 was for a K&F Nikon to Fuji-X, because it had the aperture ring for 'G' glass. I had a Sigma 150mm 2.8 macro lens left over from my Nikon gear and wanted to try it out on the Fuji - worked very well, but that thing was over a kilo by itself, not best suited to dinky bodies and cheap adapters

Sigma150macro.jpg
 
Indeed fellow vaper :)

Both lenses are excellent, prefer the colours of the 105 and it's a very famous lens.
 
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