Hi from LynMan

[LynMan]

Hi,

I’m new here.

My camera of choice is Fuji XT-2 with a lot (too much) vintage lenses 🙂

Faorites:

• Trioplan 100 2.8
• Takumar 50 1.4 (8el)
• Primoplan 58 1.9
• Takumar 35 3.5
• Flektogon 35 2.4
• Auto Takumar 55 2.0
• Primagon 150 5.5
• Biotar 75 1.5
• Jupiter-9 85 2.0
• Oreston 100 2.8
• Piesker 135 2.8
• Triotar 135 4.0

and thats only the favourites…

[JasenkaG]

@lynman Welcome to Light Stalking! That’s an impressive choice of lenses, from the ones you mentioned only Jupiter sounds familiar to me.

Is there any specific reason for your preference for vintage lenses?

[LynMan]

Hi @JasenkaG

I love the look and I focus faster with manual lens than AF (including composing).

Before Fuji I had Oly Pen F with Mitakon 25mm 0.95 and most of the Oly primes. For a year I only used manual Mitakon. Now Fuji with speedbooster gives me the same FL as FF camera with +1 stop o light. Perfect combination for vintage glass.

 

PS

I have too many lenses but love them all 😉

[Dahlia Ambrose]

@lynman Hi Lynman, welcome to the forums 🙂

You have an interesting collection of lenses and I may look them up later. What genre of photography do you shoot?

[LynMan]

Hi @dahliaambrose 🙂

mainly street, family, some landscape and portraits.

IMHO the most useful website about vintage lenses is http://vintage-camera-lenses.com

My ultimate lens is Carl Zeiss Jena – Biotar 75mm 1.5 v2 – true art lens when you need it and perfectly sharp with smooth bokeh when you want 😉 It’s expensive.

The best money/quality is Biotar 58mm 2.0 (art – smaller brother of 75mm 1.5) and Takumar 50mm 1.4 (for speed) or Minolta MD 50mm 1.4 with 49mm filter thread (a bit better than Takumar but less universal mount, different than the ones with 55mm filter thread).

For crop sensors Trioplan 50mm 2.9 is super cheap and gives that special bubble bokeh.

Oh I can talk about lenses for hours. Let me know which lens/effect/price/mount interests you 😉 If you want to read on your own – I linked some useful websites.

 

cheers

[Dahlia Ambrose]

Hi @lynman thank you so much for that link and all the information that you have written here. I will look into the site in more detail. Very interesting.

Do you shoot streets using manual focus lenses? If there are movements, how do you tackle those kind of situations when using manual focus?

I have a Nikon DSLR and a Fujifilm mirrorless. So it would be the F mount and X mount that interest me 🙂

[LynMan]

🙂 It’s just that I find modern lenses boring. Sharpness in overrated (besides commercial and landscape photography) 😉

Ha! There is only one rule to follow if you want to shoot moving subjects with fast manual lens (small DOF): always focus from infinity and after taking photo set you lens to inf. It makes focusing 100x easier. 🙂

Photo taken with Minolta MD 50mm 1.4 @1.4 not edited. Focusing kids up close it’s more difficult than street 😉

For Fuji I use Metabones speedbooster that you can buy in many mounts. http://www.metabones.com/products/?c=speed-booster  but there are other brands that copied the idea e.g. Mitakon.

Don’t buy in Nikon mount!! It has the longest distance from sensor so you won’t be able to use other lenses. It’s better to buy e.g. Canon FD and the dummy adapters for all other lenses: Nikon, M42 (a lot of different brands! AMAZING), Minolta, etc. Don’t buy M42 from Mitakon because it doesn’t work with all lenses (Carl Zeiss Jena, Takuamr 50mm 1.4). The shorter the distance the more lenses you can adapt with speedbooster + dummy adapter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flange_focal_distance

[Dahlia Ambrose]

Thank you so much for all this information here Lynman. The portrait is spot on. Love it!

I have a cheap adapter for the Fujifilm that will let me use Nikon lenses on it. It has been a few years since I last used the adapter. I remember reading that the flange distance was the same as that of the Nikon camera once the lens was mounted using the adapter on the Fujifilm. Will double check it. Thank you so much again 🙂

[LynMan]

That is what dummy adapter does but you will always have the crop factor for focal length.

With speedbooster you are getting and extra glass element that focuses FF lens on APSC camera so from 50mm nikon lens you will get about 54mm (FF eqiv) instead of 75mm (eqiv) and one extra stop of light so 50mm 1.4 will act as about 54mm 1.0 (FF eqiv) on Fuji instead of 75mm 1.4 (FF).

Quick video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=louG2350wmo

[Dahlia Ambrose]

That’s right! I should look into getting one of those speed boosters. Many thanks for the advise and information LynMan 🙂

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

At least I know where I am going when I want to borrow a lens, @lynman 😉

[LynMan]

If you are in the neighbourhood (Berlin) I can borrow you a few cool lenses to test 😉

Or just try and buy (any version) Takumar 50mm 1.4 (if you don’t mind the glow wide open) or Minolta MD 50mm 1.4 49mm filter size (if you don’t mind vignetting) – both cheap and amazing.

[Author]

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