To that end I’ve selected 7 “great buy” affordable vintage lenses and described each one in detail below. The good news: You can still find great vintage “retro look” lenses at relatively modest prices if you know which ones to look for. But it has become a cult classic and I’m not the first one to say that it’s overpriced. It’s a nice, well-made example of a simple triplet (3-element) design, and it delivers classic rendition and pleasing bokeh. Old uncoated lenses with modest specs you could have snagged for under $50 not too long ago are now selling for hundreds of dollars.Ī good example: the 100mm f/2.8 Meyer Trioplan in Exakta bayonet or Pentax (M42) screw mount, which typically sold for under 100 bucks 5-6 years ago now often fetches $400-$750.
BEST CHEAP BOKEH LENS MANUAL
The downsides: manual focus, and manual or aperture priority metering at working aperture only.īecause so many contemporary photographers have been captivated by the retro craze, the prices for many vintage lenses have skyrocketed over the past few years. And while some vintage lenses are incredibly sharp, it’s their rounded “natural” rendition of 3-dimensional space and their distinctive bokeh that can help you capture images that evoke an authentic retro sensibility. It’s not that vintage lenses are better than new ones-indeed, some of their charm may be the result of optical “defects” such as lower contrast, resolution falloff in the corners at wide apertures, spherical aberration, vignetting, and even flare.
Since I’m a big fan of retro, especially for portraits, I often mount ancient vintage lenses on my modern digital marvels using readily available adapters to render my subjects with a timeless classic look that few contemporary lenses can match. I use (at last count) three mirrorless cameras, four DSLRs, and a passel of modern lenses. For the remaining 60%, I shoot digitally, sometimes with a vintage lens attached to help capture a "retro" look. I’m a film dinosaur-about 40% of the pictures I shoot are made on black-and white film, and my favorite analog cameras range in age from 50-100 years.
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