Are old adapted lenses good enough?

So, you got yourself an adapter and now you can mount all your wonderful FD or M43 lenses on your big fancy DSLR. Congratulations! The questions is, are they good enough?

The thing is, they are old lenses, and you probably got them for cheap. I mean, yeah, you could spend 1000 dollars on a Canon FD L lens, but then, what’s the point? For 1000 dollars you can get a brand new L lens. I mean, the reason you get into this old lens thing is for the price and the amount of fun you can have with those lenses. If you pay too much for them then you’ll loose AF and the electronic comunication between the lens and the camera that you would find in a standard EF mount.

For fun sake, adapted old lenses are great and are a blast to shoot. You can get so many different effects for really not much. Personally, I got a 135 f2.8, so I got the longer prime lens covered, a 28mm f2.8 so I got your standard focal length covered and a 70-150 zoom lens which also doubles as a great macro/close-up lens. All of this for around 100 dollars gives plenty of opportunities.

1. What do you gain?

The bokeh from the 135 mm lens is fantastic. Basicaly, what you get is a lot of variety for a really afordable price tag.

In terms of focusing, you get things you might not normally receive in modern lenses. First, they all have LONG focus throws and buttery smooth focusing rings (at least mine do). For an example, my 135 has an aproximate focus throw of 270 degrees. Yep, you read that well! No need for glasses…

Also, you get a distance scale. That’s great for quick and easy focusing. Plus, it gives prefocusing a real ease of use.

Also, some may prefer having a physical aperture ring. This is great especially for those who have single digit entry-level camera bodies, since they don’t have to press combinations of buttons any more in order to change basic settings.

2. What you lose?

It’s the handy modern features you get as a standard in all modern age lenses that you lose.

First of all, it’s the AF. For sports, for example, the lack of auto focusing is a big NO NO.

Also, old manual lenses don’t have electronics built-in. What this means is that they can’t communicate any information to the camera, and that means no aperture reading, which might stop you from using some of the creative modes (P,A,S,M).

Another thing you lose is sharpness. Look, theese lenses are made with really old technology, so expecting them to perform flawlesly wide open is like expecting a Vauxhall Astra to catch up with a Ferrari in a car chase. Well, at least if the driver is not stupid enough to crash… Than, things might change a little… Still, let’s get back to the subject! Theese lenses don’t excel in sharpness. While you can get usable results, they are no match, in my opinion, to modern day glass.

3. So, why bother?

Because it’s fun! There is a real joy in thinking creatively while using theese lenses, a joy you might not find in modern day lenses. So, after you let down your chunky DSLR after a big shoot, on weekends, think of experimenting and slowing down by using manual lenses.

 

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Road trip through christianity and comunism

It was “Ziua Mortilor”, in romanian, or, translated, it would be sort of “The day of the dead”. Basicaly, we did a little road trip through Maramures, in Transylvania. The thing is, through Maramures there are not many other things to visit other than churches, monasterys and cemetrys. Sure, you have your beautiful unique gates of Maramures, but there are not many other things to see.

Visiting churches and cemetrys on “The day of the dead” was something that happened by chance, nothing intentional. The one exception to the rule was a comunist prison, but, to be honest, that place ain’t happier than a place full of tombs, so yeah…

DAY 1

First stop was at Sapanta cemetery, or “The happy cemetery”. It’s sort of funny, but when walking into the cemetery you don’t feel sad, the funny texts and ilustrations can’t not cheer someone up.

But wait a second, this is a photography blog, so for more historical facts I highly recommend a website: http://www.wikipedia.com .  

Probably the first question is: what did I take with me? Well, the selection was quite simple. My Olympus EPM-1 with a spare battery, the kit Olympus 14-42 mm lens and a Canon FD to M43 adapter. That’s because I also took with me a 135mm f2.8 and a 28mm f2.8 old manual lenses. But I’m going to talk more about those lenses in an upcoming post.

At any point in time I tried to get both wide shots, standard images and telephoto ones. Sure, that implied a lot of lens changes and that meant leaving the sensor exposed for quite a while, but you know what? The sensor is perfectly fine and no dust got in. My only conclusion is that sometimes people treat sensors as being dust vacuum cleaners, which is simply not the case.

The second stop was filled with history. It’s called “Pain’s memorial”, and it’s an ex-comunist prison transformed into a museum that acts as a witness to the cruelty some people endured in Romania’s past. As for what photos go, it wasn’t such a varried enviroment. Here there were mostly wide images, because of two reasons:

1) Each cell was transformed into a sort of a mini-museum, each having its own theme. I didn’t want to photograph walls with articles on them, so what I was left with were the main coridors. And here I could only envision wide pictures.

2) Being a prison, you would expect it’s not the brightest lit building out there. Since I had to take landscape-like photos, I could use really slow shutter speeds. Firing bursts of half a second exposures with IS was something usual, but it allowed me to get into some really dark places, like certain inmate cells.

There also was this wall with the names of ex-prisoners (not all of them, many have not yet been identified) written all over. I wanted to take two images of this, one to show the overall context and the other one to focus on the names of the inmates.

The last stop was at an old wooden church. To be fully honest, this one didn’t impress me that much, but it was still a great photographic oportunity.

DAY 2

Day 2 was also going to be the last day of the trip.We had two more locations to go visit, and the first one was another old church, this one being part of the UNESCO world heritage. The exterior was nice and beautifully kept. In order to get the whole church in frame I had to back up quite a bit. I finally found a spot where there would be no tree branches coming into the shot and I would still get it all with my 14mm lens (with a 2X crop factor, of course).

The interior was also beautiful, but I only stayed with one image because of this: It was really cramed inside, and adding a real lack of light, I couldn’t get any other usable shots. But hey, I’m proud of the image I kept of the inside, so I’m good with it! 🙂 (look it up in the flickr set)

The last and, in my opinion best, location was Barsana monestery. I was amazed a place like that existed in Romania. Everything was amazingly well kept, you saw no garbage or dirt on any of the alleys (and that’s not rare at all where I live). The buildings were recently restored, looking better than ever while preserving their value. 

Also, the sun was in a good enough spot, and I think those elements combined gave some pictures I’m really proud of…

 

As a conclusion, please visit these links to see the full sets, and consider visiting Maramures at least for a couple of days, since it’s one of the most amazing places for taking photos in Transilvania. Heck, in Romania too!

Day 1: http://bit.ly/MaramuDayOne

Day 2: http://bit.ly/MaramuDayTwo

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