New Uses for Old Lenses

[rpcrowe]

The ease at which a digital photographer can use old manual focus lenses has resulted in a upsurge of the value of these lenses. There was a time in which you could hardly give away a manual focus lens that was designed for SLR film cameras but now, many of these lenses are increasing in value.

I have enjoyed using some of these old lenses because I like the special renditions that they produce. Here is a portrait shot on a Sony A6500 using an adapted Soviet Helios 44-2, 58mm, f/2 lens. The center is fairly sharp wide open while the background has a distinctive swirly pattern. This is due to uncorrected aberrations in the old lens. Lens manufacturers have worked for decades to produce lenses without such aberrations but, now there is a niche in which photographers use these lenses to achieve the renditions caused by those uncorrected flaws,



However, I only use these lenses for fun. I would not think of using them professionally. But, they are being used quite effectively in shooting modern films. In fact, the Iron Glass Lens company remounted old Soviet Helios and other Soviet era lenses in modern cine mounts. They produced these lenses in the Ukraine before the Russian invasion of that country. Although they are in new cine mounts and have a fresh lens coating, optically these lenses are optically the same as they were when Ivan manuaactured them in the 1950's through 1980's!

https://www.vintagelensesforvideo.co...er-set-review/

These lenses were used to shoot many scenes in the film "Dune II" and their rendition was quite unique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2Qp5pL3ovA